Show Your Support for Postal Workers

As of this morning, you have probably heard that the 55,000 Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) are on strike across Canada. This might cause anxiety for Canadians who depend on our postal services right before the busy holiday season. Having to strike is not an easy decision and extremely unsettling for the postal workers who would rather deliver your mail with the right support. But sometimes the hard things are necessary to create positive change.

In case you come across a narrative that paints Postal Workers as selfish and not caring for the community they serve, here’s some information you should know:

1. Over the last 20 years, the number of workers with CUPW has remained relatively the same, at 55,000 workers. But the population of Canada had grown from 30 million to over 40 million in that same time. That’s about 727 people for every CUPW worker. So, when one of their bargaining demands was asking for decent working conditions like proper time to prepare and deliver community mail…they are thinking about you.
2. We assume that our mail is delivered by a tight system controlled by one employer. But Canada Post has segmented out more and more of its delivery chain to private contractors that anyone can bid on, undermining safe and secure delivery of your mail.¹ Having a public postal system that connects all of us, that we can trust, is important to protect.
3. We get upset at the Postal Worker when our mail is delayed, but did you know that Canada Post does not regularly back-fill workers if they need to take a sick day or vacation day, leaving them with 2-3-4 days of mail to catch up on when they get back? That’s an employer issue, not a problem with your #Postie.²
4. I’m sure you appreciate when the same postal worker gets to know your route, getting the right mail to the right box each time. Canada Post wants more “dynamic routing,” which would eliminate route ownership for postal workers and allow artificial intelligence (AI) to set new routes for workers on a daily basis. If you think it’s bad when your mail gets all mixed up by a new person on your route, imagine that on a regular basis.³
5. CUPW has already been bargaining for over a year with little progress.⁴ Workers build our economy and drive services. Sometimes withholding our labour is the only way to get an uncooperative employer to take things seriously. The goal is to get back to the bargaining table and get an agreement that respects the workers. In fact, the employer Canada Post issued notice to the workers that as of November 15, they would no longer be honoring the old Collective Agreement, cancelling vacation, and reducing staffing levels (right before the holidays).⁵ So the workers were pushed to this response, and hopefully, you now understand that Postal Workers are fighting to keep reliable postal services for you, the public.
   

Canada Post is one of our most cherished public institutions. It connects people, communities and businesses across our many different regions in Canada. It provides tens of thousands of workers with good jobs and benefits. In turn, these jobs support families and the communities in which they live.
CUPW is in negotiations with Canada Post, fighting to maintain good jobs and benefits, to provide decent and safe working conditions for your postal worker. Postal workers spend their working hours in their communities and are pushing Canada Post to meet the modern needs of people and their communities.

• Tell the CEO of Canada Post that you support postal workers.
• Post a sign of your support on social, in your car, on your mailbox, or at your home or office.
• Come out to support the workers on the picket lines and learn more about Delivering Community Power and how your postal workers are trying to look out for the communities they serve.

1. From the Canada Post Website, “We want to partner with your business. Submit proposals for mail transportation contracts and goods, materials, technology and professional services contracts.” ↩︎
2. “We are given personal days, but if you use one and take a day off, more often than not Canada Post delays the mail,” said one worker. “When we return to our route, we have 2 or 3 or 4 days of mail to deliver. Our members across the country are being disciplined for not being able to finish a route and delaying the mail for not finishing, but CPC [Canada Post Corporation] is deliberately running short-staffed and not caring about the delay of mail while our members are being suspended for the same thing.” ↩︎
3. CUPW update to workers Feb 2024, What does the employer want? ↩︎
4. Statement from the Canadian Union of Postal Workers: More Than 55,000 Postal Workers on Strike Friday November 15 2024
   For Immediate Release – OTTAWA – Some 55,000 postal workers represented by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) went on a nationwide strike on Friday, November 15 at 12:01am ET. After a year of bargaining with little progress, postal workers made the difficult decision to strike. Canada Post had the opportunity to prevent this strike, but it has refused to negotiate real solutions to the issues postal workers face every day. Instead, Canada Post left us no choice when it threatened to change our working conditions and leave our members exposed to layoffs
   Canada Post has notified the union and CUPW-represented employees that unless new agreements are reached, the current collective agreements for both the Urban and RSMC bargaining units will no longer apply as of Friday, November 15 at 8 a.m. ET ↩︎
5. Read more in the November 15 update at 7:10am  ↩︎