It’s Up To Us To Tell The Public The Truth!

Sisters and Brothers: it’s crunch time.

We need to talk to our families, neighbours and communities about what is really going on. Here are some ideas for what you might want to say.

Management is still seeking massive concessions from us and they are still rejecting most of our proposals. Their aim seems to be to provoke a bitter labour dispute, souring the Liberal government’s postal review. They are gunning for thousands of average jobs in communities across Canada: tax-paying jobs with decent benefits that our sons and daughters could look forward to.

Members of the public need to hear from us that postal workers are on their side. We want Canada Post to continue to be a profitable, public-sector success story, and we want everybody to know about our ideas for how to keep the post office thriving well into the 21^st century and beyond.

We’ve presented to the Liberal task force about postal banking and other revenue-generating services that make the most of our vast network. We discussed restoring home delivery and checking in on our seniors. We talked about better rural and Indigenous services, including bringing back Food Mail to the North. We’re trying to talk about these issues at the bargaining table too, but Canada Post management doesn’t want to listen.

Our union has been trying to negotiate with Canada Post since December 2015. Remember that Liberal saying, “Because it’s 2015”? One of our key issues is equality for our female-dominated bargaining group, the rural and suburban mail carriers. 70% of this group are women and they’re making 28% less than the male-dominated urban group.

We’ve asked that the principle of pay equity be applied to the rural and suburban carriers. Let’s not forget that the Pay Equity Committee just released a report calling for proactive pay equity legislation to stop gender discrimination and pay women equally for work of equal value. We can’t wait for equality anymore.

Nobody wanted Deepak Chopra’s mailboxes and nobody wants Deepak Chopra’s cutbacks. His half-a-million-dollar annual contract plus bonuses was renewed by the Harper government just a couple of months before they lost the election and he refused to resign when the Liberals asked him to. He does not have a mandate to destroy our postal system, drive away business and force tens of thousands of Canadian workers out onto the streets.

There is no need for the kinds of cuts that Canada Post is demanding. Our submissions to the Postal Review Task Force include a detailed breakdown of Canada Post’s finances. They have been profitable for the past 19 out of 21 years. In fact, had it not been for one-time events in 2011 and the introduction of an accounting change in 2013, CPC would have been currently enjoying its twenty-second straight year of profitability (see below).         

In fact, Canada Post may be the only corporation that consistently hides its success instead of bragging. They hid a study on postal banking which showed that it could be a win-win strategy for Canadians. They have duped the public into falsely believing that Canada Post is in financial trouble while it continues to make profits, year after year.

As of July 2^nd, Canada Post will be in a legal position to lock us out and we will be in a legal position to strike. At this point, we are not sure what will happen as talks are still going. However, if a lockout or strike does happen, we need all hands on deck and we need your support. We as workers, in our communities and on our lines, will need to support each other and stay strong. That is the only way we can safeguard public services and decent jobs for workers in communities across the country. We can and will win this fight together.

Some Supporting Facts

Canada Post segment profits over the past 5 years (net)

2016Q1: $44 million

2015: $92 million        

2014: $204 million

2013: initially reported a of $321 million profit but turned it into a loss of $29 million because of new accounting

2012: $77 million

2011: Canada Post had a one-time massive pay equity payout and a pension adjustment, plus it locked the doors of the postal system for 2 weeks, costing millions).

1994-2011: PROFITABLE

Cost of Self-Serve Mailboxes

Number of Households 800,000

Cost Charged to Developers per CMB = $200 per address as a “partial cost recovery” so we know it’s probably more than that.

Percentage of Canadians Who Still Get Their Mail at The Door (Counting Apartments and Rural Driveways)

When Canada Post announced the cuts to home mail delivery, it said that only one third of households got door-to-door delivery. The underlying message was that only a pampered few received this service.  Many people took this to mean that two-thirds of households didn’t have home mail delivery. In fact, close to two-thirds (63%) received some form of home delivery at the time.

• 33% received door-to-door delivery
• 25% got mail delivered to the entrance of their apartment
•  5% got delivery to their homes by way of a rural mailbox
• Only 25% of households received delivery to a community mailbox, group mailbox or kiosk.
• 12% got their mail through a postal box or by general delivery at a post office.

Between 2014 and 2015, CPC took home mail delivery away from 830,000 homes. Today, 3 out of every 5 households (57%) still get home mail delivery.

• 27 % of households receive door-to-door delivery
• 26% get mail delivered to the entrance of their apartment building
• 4% get delivery to their homes by way of a rural mailbox
• Only about a third (32%) of households have their mail delivered to a CMB, group mailbox or kiosk.  
• 11% get their mail through a postal box or by general delivery at a post office.