Canada Post Strike Update: Labor Minister makes order

Update: CBC is reporting that "Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon is sending the labour dispute between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) to the Canada Industrial Relations Board. MacKinnon said Friday that if the board determines negotiations between the parties are at an impasse, it has been directed to order striking CUPW members back to work under the existing collective agreement until May 22, 2025." That is wise. 

CBC is reporting that "During question period, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said that Canadians are suffering due to the postal strike and called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to bring the union and Canada Post together to end the almost four-week-old strike. Trudeau acknowledged that small businesses and Canadians in rural areas are hurting but said that the best deals happen at the bargaining table." 

Yes but Canada Post has zero incentive to bargain in good faith and that clearly shows how inept they are at business. Canada Post is in a deficit position and they have absolutely no regard for the millions of dollars in revenue they have lost over this Christmas season. Instead they are willing to sink the ship to justify their agenda. 

Sadly making a profit isn't their agenda because if it was they'd be doing a much better job at it. This is a sad time for all postal workers because the future looks bleak. Their is no job security in a  company that can't make a profit. However, BC Transit and BC Hydro also run massive deficits but Canada Post wasn't always like this. They used to run profits and pay dividends to the government which increased tax revenue. 

The argument for privatization rises when the corporation is running deficits. If the corporation runs deficits then privatizing it will relieve tax payers of that burden. When I was with Canada Post I opposed privatization because a public Post Office was making money and paying taxes. More taxes than a private company would. 

That has changed and it's mostly because of miss management. As I said in my post about a solution to the dispute the problem is Admail. Changing mail volumes makes it no longer cost effective to force letter carriers to go to every single call on one third of their route every day with flyers. When letter carriers were going to almost every call with letter mail it made sense. Now it does not. 

As Canada Post's number show, the number of calls is increasing while mail volume is decreasing. That means it's more spread out. There is a potential for profit because of the increased demand for parcel delivery. 

As I said in my previous post, for 30 years we've been listening to corporate clowns claim that Admail is the future of the business. It is not. The deficits prove that. The future is in parcels, documents and postal banking. That's where the future is. 

The sad reality is that Canada Post mismanagement will deliberately run deficits to justify privatization. If you want to privatize so bad get rid of Admail. In so doing you successfully privatized Admail. They won't do that because they want the lost revenue from Admail to justify sinking the entire ship. 

Canada Post needs the ability to innovate but they also need the desire. If the corporation wants to turn all the foot walks into mobiles let them. Giving every carrier a vehicle and getting rid of Admail will lighten the load and streamline the process. If the Union opposes that because not everyone has drivers licenses, get over it. How can you be a courier without a license? If you don't have a license, work in the plant. Right now we need to save the profitability of Canada Post because without that there is no job security.