Postal Workers Awarded Small Wage Hikes

A federal arbitration board Sunday rejected management arguments that postal workers are overpaid and awarded modest pay increases to the nation’s largest postal union over the next four years.

Some mail industry experts predicted that the settlement will force the Postal Service to seek a 3-cent increase in the price of a first-class letter to 35 cents by 1998.

Postmaster General Marvin T. Runyon has asserted that some postal workers are paid as much as 30 percent more than their counterparts in the private sector. But his argument apparently had little impact on the three-member panel ordered to resolve a wage dispute between the 360,000-member American Postal Workers Union and the Postal Service.