The main post office on Goodlette-Frank Road will be closed for most operations Monday in honor of Veterans Day, but that doesn’t mean the facility will be quiet.
Quite the contrary as United States Postal Service workers from across Southwest Florida will gather at the Naples post office for a rally calling for higher wages.
The Postal Service and the National Association of Letter Carriers union reached a tentative agreement for its 200,000-plus mail carriers to receive a 1.3% yearly pay increase.
That’s less than last year’s 1.4% bump in pay and is unacceptable to letter carriers like John Murphy. He lives in Fort Myers and for the past three years has been a letter carrier in Naples.
“The whole thing is -- the 1.3 is shameful,” he said.
Murphy said letter carriers within his union all make the same pay based on years of service regardless of whether they live and work in costly Southwest Florida or more affordable areas such as in the Midwest.
“We have two letter carriers in Naples, Florida, that are living — one is living couch to couch. He's couch surfing, and the other one's living in his truck. Because that's just two people that we know of so far, and that's in one city,” Murphy said.
The rally is from10 to 11 a.m. at 1200 Goodlette-Frank Road North. Workers from Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Lehigh, Naples, and community members and postal customers will be in attendance.
The mail carrier rally is one of at least two being held in Florida Monday. There have been multiple demonstrations through the country.