The federal government is doing management’s bidding by undermining CUPW and forcing a vote on a substandard offer.
God damn, Liberals you have an open goal here. Side with workers just once, throw your weight behind a real labor movement, and you’d leave Conservatives scrambling in the dust. But no. Instead, it’s all half-measures while letting corporations run the show. Missed opportunities are practically your brand at this point.
In 2-3 years when there’s another nation-wide strike, I wonder whether anyone in the Liberal party is going to put together that workers at Canada Post are still trying to fight the company on issues they brought up 10-15 years ago because they can’t get management to the table since the government keeps doing their dirty work.
I would be really surprised if there’s no rolling job action this Christmas season if they’re legislated back (again).
This whole saga is so incredibly frustrating. You have a situation where things have to change. The management is trying to restructure because the money does not exist to maintain the status quo. The Union refuses to budge, and based on this article, their best solution is to legislate away the competition? Even if that were to happen, it’s not Canada Post management that will be making that decision, and it’s effects would not be immediate. Does the union just plan to sit at home forever?
Canada Post is a public service and allowed to operate in the red. It does not need, and should not be required to, make a profit.
No, it’s not. It’s a crown corporation and is expected to pay for itself. You could aruge it shouldn’t be that way, but that’s the state of things right now.
My statement is my argument. Read the rest of the thread for further details.
Tax revenue is a fixed size pool of money. Canada Post may not need to make a profit, but it does need to break even. There are many other things that money needs to be spent on.
Public services are allowed to operate in the red because the money to operate them, provided by tax revenue, is fixed by the budget and does not need to be paid back. We pay for the service through taxation and if the service requires more money to operate efficiently we should be either increasing taxes to cover the cost or trimming management positions.
I have no problem with Canada Post operating at a loss, but not while that effectively means taxpayer dollars subsidizing the private businesses dominating all easy, high-volume routes using underpaid gig labor. CP are getting penalized at both ends, as are we. The only other way I can think to frame it is urban taxpayers subsidizing rural and especially remote communities, which I’m sure will be very popular while public transit remains wholly inadequate.
I don’t know how to solve any of that internally, nor just within shipping. It’s most likely far from feasible to mandate every shipping company and-who-counts-as-such? deliver to every corner of Canada, or even of just certain regions. But putting an end to gig work by closing the contracting loopholes would be a good start. And start forcing all employers with more than 10 employees – including contracted sole proprietorships – to maintain a supermajority of labor hours being supplied through salaried full-time positions. Even that disrupts actual independent professionals, but at least it would still be a level playing field.
Anyway, it seems to me like most of the real problems and their origins are external to Canada Post itself — so it makes sense that there may not be any kind of internal solution.
The simple solution I see is making Canada post a tax funded public service again, and restructuring it as such.
Parcel delivery is a service that can be run for a profit (by real couriers like UPS, FEDEX, etc, not those bullishit Amazon couriers). There are other services the government provides that cannot (and should not) be operated for profit (ie healthcare). I would much rather my tax dollars go towards that, rather than operating Canada Post at a loss.
Healthcare is a service that can be run for profit.
Education is a service that can be run for profit.
Infrastructure building can be run for profit.
Home building can be run for profit.
Doesn’t mean any of it should.
I would rather my tax dollars go to the services we need which includes postal. You may live in an area that easily has other alternatives, but this is Canada and most of our country is rural.
There are other services the government provides that cannot (and should not) be operated for profit (ie healthcare).
I already said this.
Education is a service that can be run for profit.
Infrastructure building can be run for profit.
Home building can be run for profit.
Doesn’t mean any of it should.
I would rather my tax dollars go to the services we need which includes postal. You may live in an area that easily has other alternatives, but this is Canada and most of our country is rural.
I added to the conversation. Care to do the same?
Does the army need to break even? OHIP? School Boards? Fire Departments? Services are just that, services, not a source of revenue.
We can increase taxes. It’s an option.
But when I’m a millionaire that will take away from me!
- Most voters
From the other perspective it’s not a great deal either. Gutting those decent jobs of the current posties and essentially turning them all into part time (poorer paid with less benefits) jobs isn’t great either.
We don’t need to have Canada Post turn into the Amazon-equivalent “make them piss in bottles so they meet their quotas” to make this work. And if we do need to go that far, then it’s the recipients that need to adjust their expectations of deliveries. It’s not up to Canada Post to turn into a shit place to work to meet unrealistic delivery expectations.
I refuse to order from Amazon due to how shit their delivery companies treat their employees. Sure the package gets to me a few days later ordering from others, but if it means the delivery folk are actually valued and compensated accordingly, then I’m fine with that. I am not OK treating delivery drivers like shit just so I get my Chinese junk a day or two faster.
Competition is the spin-doctored way of saying exploitation.
