CREA started as a letter carrier's side project. I built it because I was tired of spending hours digging through arbitration cases when I should have been on the street. But almost immediately, stewards from other crafts started reaching out: When are you going to build this for us?

Fair question. The grievance research problem isn't unique to city carriers. Clerks have it. Mail handlers have it. Rural carriers have it. Every craft has thousands of arbitration decisions, thick governing documents, and interpretation manuals that take years to learn. So we got to work.

What We've Been Working On

Expanding CREA to multiple crafts turned out to be harder than we expected. Each union has its own contract, its own interpretation manual, its own arbitration history, and its own vocabulary. You can't just dump everything into one database and hope for the best — a clerk searching for overtime guidance needs to see the JCIM, not the JCAM. A rural carrier needs the RCAM and PO-603, not M-41. Getting that scoping right was the real challenge.

Here's where we are now. When you sign up, you pick your union. From there, CREA tailors everything — the arbitration cases, the manual sections, the document references — to your craft. No cross-craft noise.

What We've Indexed So Far

For APWU Stewards

We dug into the APWU's governing documents and indexed:

• The JCIM 2025 — APWU's joint interpretation manual, fully searchable
• The APWU collective bargaining agreement (2024-2027) with the clerk, maintenance, and motor vehicle craft articles
• 2,673 APWU arbitration cases spanning decades of decisions
• RI-399 jurisdictional dispute materials — relevant for both clerk and mail handler work assignment questions

For NPMHU Stewards

Mail handler research resources we've added:

• The CIM v.6 — NPMHU's contract interpretation manual
• The NPMHU national agreement (2022-2025), which remains in effect while bargaining continues
• 212 NPMHU arbitration cases including jurisdictional and subcontracting decisions
• RI-399 — shared with APWU, covering how work gets assigned between crafts in processing plants

For NRLCA Stewards

Rural carriers have some unique governing documents that we found fascinating to research:

• The RCAM — the rural contract administration manual, first published in March 2024
• The NRLCA national agreement (2024-2027)
• PO-603 — rural carrier duties and responsibilities (the rural equivalent of M-41)
• The RRECS guide — the evaluated compensation system that replaced the old mail count approach
• 73 NRLCA arbitration cases with more being added as we find them

For NALC Stewards

Nothing has changed for you. Same JCAM, same M-39, same M-41, same 30,000+ arbitration cases, same MRS documents. We didn't take anything away to build this — it's all additive.

The Shared Stuff

USPS-wide documents like the ELM, ASM, DMM, and F-21 apply to everyone regardless of craft. We've tagged those as shared so every steward sees them. That's about 14,700 sections of reference material available to all unions.

The Scale of What We're Indexing

To give you a sense of what's in the system now: we've tagged over 33,000 arbitration cases by union affiliation and indexed more than 20,000 manual sections across all crafts and shared USPS documents. We also built citation verification that understands the difference between each union's documents — so the JCIM never gets confused with the JCAM, and the CIM never gets confused with the JCIM. Small thing, but it matters when you're citing sources in a grievance.

How to Get Started

Create an account and select your union during signup. You can also switch your union anytime in account settings if you need to.

We're Still Building

We're actively expanding the non-NALC databases. The APWU, NPMHU, and NRLCA collections are solid starting points, but they're not as deep as NALC's yet. If you're a steward with arbitration awards, settlement documents, or other materials you'd be willing to share, we'd love to hear from you. Every case makes the tool better for your whole craft.