CURRIER: Canada Post threatens with strike in the name of “fair wages”

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You may have thought they were joking. After all, it was only a few months ago that Canada Post was telling Canadians it was bleeding money. The precise nature of the affliction affecting Canada’s oldest institution was detailed on Sept. 7.

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Our once beloved post office has become an irrelevancy for millions of Canadians and while many still rely on Canada Post for mail and parcel delivery, that number is dwindling. Fewer letters and bills are delivered each year and the high cost of operation renders CP’s parcel delivery uncompetitively priced compared to its competitors.

How are CP workers responding to that outcome? Strike! An astounding 95% of workers represented by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) voted to strike.

Barring a late deal, they’ll be in a legal position to implement said action beginning tomorrow. CUPW says it’s bargaining for “Fair wages, safe working conditions and the right to retire with dignity,” according to Monday’s news release.

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Who could argue with that? We all want that from our employers. Such regulations assure us of safe working conditions. It’s not entirely clear how Canada Post has been allowing employees to toil in unsafe conditions, but that point’s been offered at the bargaining table.

As for fair wages, that’s even more difficult to pin down. Define “fair”. Who gets to decide what’s fair and what isn’t? Is it CUPW or management? All we know is that fair is currently more than what’s being paid.

In the case of CUPW, as with all unions, the main goal is to convince workers that they are being treated unfairly and to keep the membership in a perpetual state of discontent. If workers are happy, the union becomes unimportant.

There’s no questioning the positive impact the union movement has had for Canadian workers. To suggest that the folks who deliver our mail are among society’s downtrodden, however, is a bit rich. That’s why you may have thought their threat of a strike was an early Halloween prank.

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It’s no joke. These folks are earnest in their belief that they are not being paid a fair wage, that they don’t work in safe conditions, and that they’re currently unable to retire with dignity. While our postal workers aren’t buttering their bread on both sides, neither are they sweatshop labourers.

Here’s the real issue: Canada Post is a corporation that’s losing ground in both of its areas of expertise. It may not exist in another decade or so. Letters will be akin to word processors and giants like FedEx and small competitors like those in the gig economy, will have put Canada Post’s parcel business on the sideline.

A postal strike is highly unlikely. The big picture, however, is that CUPW won’t acknowledge that it represents people whose jobs will soon be vanishing from the Canadian landscape.

Still, CUPW believes that the Canadian taxpayer is so flush with cash that creating even larger losses at CP is justifiable in the name of “fair wages”. If only they could tell us what they mean by “fair”.

— Geoff Currier is a former Winnipeg broadcaster.

Have thoughts on what’s going on in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada or across the world? Send us a letter to the editor at wpgsun.letters@kleinmedia.ca.

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