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- cross-posted to:
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They’re trying to force the workers to strike so they can make their case to the government that the strike is disrupting an essential service and demand that they force the union to accept the terms. Literally the same thing happened a year ago: Postal workers make demands and are willing to negotiate, Canada Post completely refuses to negotiate and locks out the workers, workers strike, postal traffic in Canada grinds to a halt, millions of people and businesses are impacted, Canadian government cites the post office as an “essential service” and uses that to force the union and employer into arbitration even though the employer was the belligerent one and didn’t even attempt to negotiate in the first place.
Also, news outlets scapegoated the union for all the delayed mail the last time they went on strike. “How could they do this to Canada? Can’t they just accept working like slaves? It’s an essential service after all, that means we get to exploit the people doing the job as much as we want and if they strike they’re the problem!” No mention of what the union’s actual demands were or how the post office itself acted.
Also also, Canada Post is NOT tax funded. It’s a government institution that is set up like a normal corporation, but with the government as the shareholder. If that’s not an ass backwards way of providing an essential service I don’t know what is. Literally the worst of both worlds between private and public ownership.
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We need to decide whether Canada Post is an essential service we require to be provided as equitably as possible to all Canadian population in the furthest reaches of our country in order to accomplish of the fundamental task of having a fair and functioning democratic society where at the very least people can remain informed in a timely and trustworthy way of important matters from municipal governments, government agencies and election officials and candidates, delivery of licenses, ID cards, bank cards and other important things fundamental to the operation of our country.
If we do consider that essential (I do), we need to discuss what the actual expectations for that service are, how it can continue to be done efficiently across the urban/rural divide and across the paper/digital divide. Whatever goals we ultimately decide are necessary, we need to make sure we are committed to fund it at a sustainable level to accomplish those goals, even if it means providing tax dollars. And if we are going to continue to operate it as a business, we need to understand that other businesses in the space are not going to play nice, they are going to be mean and they are going to try to put it out of business or weaken it until they can make an attempt to buy it by convincing the government to privatize it, because that’s how business works. And the government needs to be able to recognize what they are doing and either use their prodigious financial reserves to weather the cynical attacks of private industry or simply put a stop to it with the powers that only a government can bring to bear. Government needs to stop acting like they’re powerless and regulate the damn economy. If they can’t regulate the industries they’re directly participating in there is absolutely no hope for properly regulating the ones they aren’t.
Canada Post should, in my opinion, be operated like CBC, at arms length, but with a funding commitment that allows a minimum service level to be guaranteed at no more than cost, with additional services provided as and when profitability allows. As for what that minimum service level should be, I think daily delivery to the door is probably fair to question the necessity of in the modern world, but I’d give people more options before unilaterally shoving all new neighborhoods into community mailboxes. I think community mailboxes should be reduced, and instead people given the choice of immediate secure digital delivery (when possible, like ePost but generalized for all mail that can possibly be scanned), daily delivery to a community mailbox, PO Box, or post office, or weekly delivery directly to the door. In fact, select all of the above if you want. Scanned for digital delivery first, sent to community box, and if you don’t pick it up it gets delivered a week later. I think that’s a reasonable minimum standard for almost anywhere in the country, except perhaps the most remote areas where at least weekly delivery to the local post office could be guaranteed. No it’s not likely ever going to be as cheap or as smooth a system as we want it to be, but that’s life, we’ve got a big country and a lot of responsibilities.
Don’t mind me though, I’m just an idealistic old fart.
Your idealism is something that if implemented would help our world far more than the current systems & modes of thought that are in place.
If they are so essential than their demands must be met. If not then they can strike for as long as they need to to get a fair deal.
It’s hilarious how anti-labour most Canadians are, whenever the teachers, nurses, postal workers, [any public service workers] go on strike, people lose there minds about the greedy workers. All of us, are closer to being homeless and dying on the street than we are to being one of the parasites that get rich of the work of others.
Hear, hear!
Pounds desk
It’s because most of us have been abused by employers, teachers, and the system as a whole, and our only model for what an employer-employee relationship is is one where the employee has zero power and does what they’re told. This, in turn, means most of us would be awful, toxic bosses, and that comes out whenever we, collectively, are the employer.
I remember when the bus drivers went on strike here, like a decade ago now, or more. The radio call-in shows were swamped with people complaining that they don’t get any of the things the union was demanding. Rather than wondering why, or unionizing and striking to demand such things, they just kept telling the bus drivers to get fucked.
We’re a society of crabs in buckets.
No you are wrong, but the squeaky wheels get all the grease because news media is controlled by those who sign the paychecks, not the workers. Plenty of working class people are behind the rights of the workers to stand up for what they feel they deserve, but we don’t get any air time?!
Management pulled similar shit during the Christmas strike.
Union offered a rotating strike so as to affect christmas package deliveries as little as possible. Management refused and then did whatever they could to blame the workers for “ruining Christmas”.
Fuck corporations. Even government ones.
Anything whose primary motive is profit should be bombed.
It’s a government institution that is set up like a normal corporation, but with the government as the shareholder. If that’s not an ass backwards way of providing an essential service I don’t know what is.
Counterpoint: by operating at arm’s length it can’t be steered on a whim by a sitting government, e.g. like DeJoy grinding USPS to a half during the 2020 election. Same can be said about CBC
its kinda wierd dejoy dint kept going after his 2020 attack on the mail in, he did nothing after for 4 years,(at least i dint hear from usps worker family member)
Could be worse, could actually be a normal corporation
they should give more time, but to be fair 95%+ of the offer is identical to the current contract.
They don’t know that unless they go through it, which will take more than a day
