CSN Press Room - UNADDRESSED EMPLOYEE CONCERNS re: CANADA POST STRIKE
EXTENDED PRESS RELEASE - 20/12/2024
MEDIA NOT REPORTING on UNADDRESSED EMPLOYEE CONCERNS re: CANADA POST STRIKE
CSNews December 20, 2024 Contact H. Noerenberg CanadianShareableNews@proton.me
The sudden resignation of Canada’s Finance Minister/Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on December 16, 2024 and the subsequent fate of the Liberal Party completely overshadowed any media coverage of the fate of roughly 55,000 striking Canada Post workers and their families. Throughout the four and a half week long strike, circulating media reports focussed on the resulting inconvenience to small businesses, Christmas shoppers, remote communities. Few journalists relayed the concerns and grievances expressed by CUPW workers themselves. And it appears no one asked the Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon what he found so “imaginative” about this latest back to work order for Canada Post employees. His December 16 comments appear unreported.
On December 17, 2024, the President of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), Jan Simpson, published the following response to the order issued for Canadian postal workers to return back to work:
“The Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) ordered postal workers to return to work December 17, 2024, in a clear violation of our Charter rights. We want to praise all postal workers across the country who made huge sacrifices, holding strong on picket lines for good jobs, fair wages, and a strong public post office.
We have waited far too long for our issues to be resolved, in collective bargaining but, once again, the government has stepped in, tipping the scales in the Employer’s favour. Their interference will make us wait longer and add other issues to the table. Even as we take part in the next steps of the process ordered by the Minister of Labour, we will not stand down. The Union has already made it clear that we consider the Minister’s section 107 directive an illegal breach of our Charter rights, and we will fight it at the CIRB and in the courts.”
On December 16, 2024, Postmedia journalist Stephanie Ip reported:
CUPW had been asking for wage increases in line with inflation, protections for pregnant and breastfeeding employees, improved benefits, paid meal and rest period rights, among other items.
While Canada Post and CUPW have traded offers over the past month, talks broke down last week with CUPW saying the employer had “sat on (their) latest offer for five days with no response.”
Meanwhile, on December 16, Canada Post reported:
We look forward to welcoming our employees back to work and serving the millions of Canadians and businesses who rely on our services. While the terms of the existing collective agreements will be extended until May 22, 2025, we also put forward an offer to implement a wage increase of five per cent for employees, which was proposed in the company’s last global offer. With both parties in agreement, the wage increase will be retroactive to the day after each collective agreement expired. The increase will remain in effect going forward,
While this might be a temporary short term solution to wage concerns, it does nothing to address other concerns raised by Canada Post employees. With the exception of two New Democrat Members of Parliament (Lindsay Mathyssen London—Fanshawe, ON. Lisa Marie Barron Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC) few people speaking in public seem to be aware of the perspective of Canada Post workers themselves.
While the strike was still underway, Canadian Shareable News spoke with a small group of striking workers themselves. Information shared below is written in the voice of these workers. It was their hope that informed Canadians could put pressure on the corporation and management of Canada Post to “negotiate in good faith and not misrepresent the situation.” These were the messages they shared:
Postal workers in Canada are represented by a number of unions. Only CUPW workers were on strike, but since the major mail sorting plants are in the hands of CUPW, there was no mail being sorted EXCEPT for government issued cheques. The workers were still allowed to be on the job site in order to get those cheques into people's hands as the union didn't want undue hardship pushed on Canadians.
Workers at other locations who belong to other unions were coming to work but without sorted mail, they did not have not much to do!!
Canada Post is a crown corporation that runs on its own funds. It does not get taxpayer money and makes enough money so that the CEO and all the top brass can get hefty bonuses. This does not trickle down to the regular postal worker.
After an earlier CUPW contract ran out in January 2018, the workers were mandated by the government to return to work nine months later. They then worked without a contract for two years until, in 2021 when they were given two one-year collective agreements. The latest agreement for rural workers ended December 31 2023 with the agreement for urban workers ending January 30, 2024.
Negotiations started in the fall of 2023. Since then, Canada Post has not negotiated any deal with the workers to ensure that they pay is commensurate with others in the courier/parcel/mail delivery business, which is what CUPW was asking for.
Because Canada Post is a corporation (even though it is a Crown Corporation) it runs its own business practices but it has the legal obligation to serve Canadians all over the country, regardless of remoteness, which private delivery companies do not have.
The claim by upper management that Canada Post is going broke is seen by workers as absolute bogus. Before the strike, the volume of mail was going up due to parcel delivery. A Rural Suburban Mail Carrier reported that in 2019 her predecessor in that role had 65 scanable items on a busy day. This had now risen to a daily volume in excess of 200 items per day from October to April. On an extreme day in a previous Christmas season, this carrier had to deal with 650 scanable items on a single day.
Workers see lots of examples of mismanagement of funds as the REAL reason the corporation keeps claiming it is losing money. Examples: a whole fleet of electric trucks sitting on parking lots, not being allocated to anyone's route. If they sit idle much longer, they will all need their batteries replaced. - The top heavy upper management (and the bonuses it is getting) - Renovating postal outlet buildings and replacing banks of mailboxes with new ones when neither are not necessary - etc. As in the top echelon of the CBC giving itself bonuses despite declining viewership, Canada Post executives are also rewarding themselves despite an alleged decline in profitability (in the eye of the workers interview, this bonuses are a part of the alleged decline.
Canada Post has majority shares in the Purolator courier company — where the delivery staff and sorting staff are paid significantly more than at Canada Post. Purolator staff drive company trucks. The majority of Canada Post parcel delivery drivers (Rural Suburban Mail Carriers, or RSMCs) need to a) provide their own vehicle b) carry their own insurance c) pay for their own vehicle upkeep, maintenance and repair costs d) get a vehicle allowance that does not even cover the cost of fuel. So in essence, in order to work as a delivery driver for Canada Post, employees SUBSIDIZE THEIR JOBS. This has not been addressed for years.
Workers worry that the management of the Canada Post corporation will continue to mismanage funds (wasting them on bonuses and unneeded expenses) in order to make it a money losing enterprise with the end aim of privatizing delivery services. Given that the strike has caused business to migrate to the private courier services, such as the Canada Post owned Purolator courier, this worry is clearly not unfounded.
Canada Post has not contributed the employer share to the company pension fund for a number of years.
Canada Post wants to pay new employees lower rates than the industry norm with a much slower rate of progression to top wage status.
Striking workers hear Canada Post is only hiring new people on part time schedules. As a result, people needing full time employment need to supplement with additional work, which has an impact on service because there is less consistency on the job.
Canada Post also wants to start a new pension fund for new employees. This means that the new pension contributions will not go into the current fund. By not. putting new contributions into the existing fund, longtime workers fear that fund will become defunct in 10-15 years. They fear that by the time they retire, that fund will have been depleted, should the funds from new workers to continue to support it.
Also increasingly, letter carriers need to sort mail as they walk. Their deliveries are no longer regularly coming arranged by street/address, which was the regular state of affairs before. This significantly lengthens the postal delivery people's exposure to the elements on extremely hot or cold days.
The workers did not choose to have s strike just before Christmas. The dates are factors of "cooling off periods" etc. and are tied to when the original contract ran out. Workers interviewed by CSNews on the first days of the strike said that if the strike had happened at any other time, “the chances that public pressure would lead to a resolution are a lot lower and we would most likely be out indefinitely”.
Speaking of their local situation, the workers who spoke to CSNews said their local office has been understaffed for a long time. They observed that this is not fair to the customers who need to stand in long line-ups for service and to the workers who need to keep doing work both in the front and the back of the office, when there is full time work in both locations.
Postmedia journalist Devika Desai reached out to one CUPW member following the announcement of the return to work order and reported on December 17, 2024:
“There are mixed emotions,” Wycliffe Odour, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers Local 710 which represents 2,500 Canada Post staffers, said. “(Workers) pointed to the fact that we’ve been out for four weeks, were on our fifth week without pay, sacrifices that we made and the fact that they were cut off from benefits and threatened by their employers with layoffs and now they have to go back to the same conditions, when we said we are not going back to the same conditions.”
Going down to $56/day for each day they spend four hours on the picket line meant that CUPW members forfeited the income they would have made over the past 4 1/2 weeks to get their messages out. The workers interviewed by CSNews found that coverage of their situation in the mainstream media was not balanced with far more reports around the inconvenience to businesses in the short term rather than the concerns listed above.
The employees interviewed indicated they would appreciate if concerned Canadians who believe, that Rural Suburban Mail Carriers should NOT be needing to subsidize their jobs just so Canadians can get their parcels, while Canada Post owned Purolator drivers drive company vehicles, can contact the office of Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Public Services and Procurement (the former health minister during the COVID-19 crisis) to put pressure on the CEO of Canada Post to ensure fair working conditions for Canada Post employees. https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/jean-yves-duclos(89408)#contact. See also https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/our-company/leadership-and-governance/corporate-governance/directors-biographies.page.
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