Canada Post Workers Are Fighting An Employer-Led Race To The Bottom

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is fighting for the future of Canada Post. For more than a week, 55,000 union members have been on a nation-wide strike, resisting the employer’s attempt to impose concessions. As it stands, the sides remain far apart.

The union is calling for wages that keep pace with inflation, safe working conditions and pension plan protection. After a year of employer resistance at the bargaining table, the union was left with no choice but to hit the picket lines to protect past gains and secure a decent future for members.

Against a boss that has cried hard times for years, CUPW is attempting to prevent the spread of precarious forms of work in its ranks. But amid competition from low-wage private couriers, Canada Post wants to expand contract and part-time work.

It’s for this reason that the battle at Canada Post impacts us all. Like LCBO workers earlier this year, CUPW members are fighting the employer-led race to the bottom. As calls to privatize Canada Post intensify and unionized workers face ever greater pressures to concede their past victories, it will take member resolve and solidarity to win.

How The Union Got Here

CUPW is split between two large units: the urban membership and the rural and suburban mail carriers unit. The union has been without a contract for more than a year. Throughout the bargaining process, Canada Post has remained steadfast in resisting both workers’ demands and the union’s proposals to improve the crown corporation’s fortunes.

In August, CUPW filed “notices of dispute” after making “little progress” on its key proposals and hearing employer calls for concessions and rollbacks at the bargaining table. This move triggered the government’s appointment of a conciliator to aid the negotiation process.

It took until September for Canada Post to finally table a full offer to both CUPW units. According to the union, much of the package failed to meet members’ needs. The corporation offered only a 10 per cent wage increase over four years and called for a series of concessions, including more “flexible” benefit plans, cutting leave entitlements, and placing newer members on a substandard pension plan. Such “tiering” of the workforce is a common employer tactic and is a poison pill for unions who allow it to happen. Two-tier contracts introduce division into the membership and undermine solidarity in the long-term.

The union countered with its full set of proposals to protect good jobs and wages while increasing the financial capacity of Canada Post, most of which the corporation rejected.

By mid-October, the period of conciliation had ended and the union moved one step closer to walking off the job. Following a mandatory three-week “cooling off” period, postal workers in both the urban and rural units voted by more than 95 percent for strike action.

Perhaps recognizing the federal government’s recent propensity to impose binding arbitration, on November 1, CUPW publicly called on Canada Post to “negotiate, don’t arbitrate.” As of November 3, the union was in a legal strike position, but did not issue its required 72-hour notice, hoping to instead use its strike mandate to pressure the employer at the table. The union then followed up by tabling updated proposals, including 22 per cent wage increases over four years, 10 paid medical days, additional staffing and protections against contracting out services. The employer’s “final” wage offer remained stuck at 11.5 per cent over the same period.

Days later, the union held solidarity rallies in cities throughout the country, drawing support from the national labour movement and local community members.

With no further avenues for winning a contract at the table, the union issued its 72-hour strike notice on November 12, as many of its primary issues remained unaddressed by the employer. Canada Post then responded with a retaliatory lockout notice to the union, effectively guaranteeing a work stoppage.

Bargaining While Broke?

For years, Canada Post’s management has complained of the crown corporation’s sorry financial state, making this year no different. With demand for its mail services falling, the crown corporation has posted losses of roughly $3 billion since 2018. According to its 2023 annual report, Canada Post lost $748 million in that year alone. But there’s much more to the story.

Management at the crown corporation routinely calls for “modernization” and rethinking its traditional business model. Indeed, in this round of bargaining, Canada Post is pressuring the union to accept a seven-day work week with weekend delivery performed by part-timers and contractors, supposedly in response to competition from private delivery services. Yet, Canada Post has sent mixed signals regarding whether it wants to be a serious player in the parcel delivery business.

For example, the company rapidly increased investment spending in apparent response to a surge in parcel demand. According to the union, Canada Post allocated $4 billion for infrastructure upgrades over five years to handle additional delivery. Yet, as the pandemic ended, a large portion of this demand subsided. Despite this enormous outlay, in 2022 Canada Post informed Amazon it was unable to handle its shipping volume, “leading Amazon to take most of their business elsewhere,” as CUPW puts it.

The union has called out these questionable investment decisions, and asked why workers should pay for the poor performance of management. According to the union, between 2017 and 2023, non-labour spending at Canada Post grew by 56.5 per cent, while wages rose by only 14.1 per cent. In addition, the company hasn’t contributed to the union’s pension fund since May 2023. As CUPW president Jan Simpson summarized, “The financial situation we face is the result of Canada Post management.”

It’s not unreasonable to surmise that Canada Post is weaponizing its financial situation to extract concessions from workers. As the union warned as far back as May, Canada Post was “planting seeds of fear in the media about the Corporation running out of money and [...] taxpayers [...] having to foot the bill.”

Canada Post and CUPW have vastly different views about how to improve the postal corporation’s financial situation. Rather than cost-cutting and imposing concessions on workers, the union has long advocated introducing postal banking and senior check-in services.

The employer maintains that its current model is “unsustainable,” yet remains unresponsive to any of the union’s suggestions for improvement. In this, it is supported by a slew of academics, commentators and right-wing think-tanks who have long called for the postal service to be privatized.

Jesse Kline at the National Post thinks Canada Post is an irrelevant relic. Yet its services are apparently important enough for the Retail Council of Canada to call on the government to impose a back-to-work order on the union. Larry MacDonald, writing in The Globe and Mail, maintains that “the relentless march of technological change” has eroded the employer’s capacity to sustain its overly-demanding workforce. Others point to the supposed low-cost innovation coming from the private sector, with which Canada Post and its stubborn union cannot compete. Of course, the Fraser Institute also claims the “solution” is to end the “mail monopoly.”

These are not calls for innovation or improvement but rather appeals to undermine and attack workers and their unions.

Fighting The Race To The Bottom

The critics of Canada Post frequently point to the “private sector” as a preferable alternative to the crown corporation. Yet, Canada Post has long existed alongside other parcel delivery services, such as United Parcel Service (UPS), which like Canada Post-owned Purolator, is unionized with the Teamsters. In fact, in an act of solidarity, the Teamsters at Purolator have refused to handle packages originally postmarked for Canada Post during CUPW’s strike.

The private sector “innovation” to which critics point, however, involves the use of app-based technology and subcontracting to “fissure” the employment relationship, drive down wages, and leave workers without regulatory protection. “Innovation” and “modernization” are calls for Canada Post to look more like Amazon and other gig economy delivery services.

Amazon, for example, relies on a system of “Delivery Service Partners” (DSPs) to fulfill the “last mile” of getting packages from fulfillment centres to customers. Despite the e-commerce behemoth setting the terms of employment, including wage rates, drivers officially work for DSP contractors.

In instances where these drivers have attempted to unionize, Amazon has either terminated contracts with delivery “partners” or refused to participate in negotiations, claiming it is not the drivers’ employer. Some labour advocates have argued that Amazon and DSPs should be considered “joint employers,” which would require Amazon to recognize drivers’ unions and participate in bargaining. As it stands, however, Amazon delivery drivers remain locked into a subcontracted employment relationship wherein Amazon squeezes DSPs with extremely thin margins, and the delivery firms in turn extend that cost pressure to drivers.

The labour conditions among misclassified “self-employed” delivery drivers, such as those engaged through Amazon Flex, are even worse. With employment status denied entirely, these “independent contractors” are without minimum wage, hours or work, or termination protections. They also can’t unionize, and have no recourse when they’re injured on the job.

Is this the model we want for Canada Post?

The Future of Canada Post

Like so many other labour battles in the public sector and at crown corporations, the Canada Post strike is about much more than the narrow interests of postal workers. Yes, CUPW members deserve decent wages, secure pensions and safe working conditions. But they and their union realize that considerably more is at stake.

The postal workers’ union is fighting the corporate race to the bottom. Allowing low-wage, sweated labour to become the norm and model in courier services benefits no one but the bosses. As the old union slogan goes, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”

On the contrary, reforming Canada Post along worker-friendly lines could form the basis for a revitalized public service. The union has such a plan, called “Delivering Community Power,” which centres financial inclusion through postal banking, green jobs and the fight against climate, and a renewed commitment to community services.

As Canada Post president and CEO Doug Ettinger himself put it in the corporation’s 2023 annual report, “Canada Post is now at a critical juncture — modernize and revitalize to serve a rapidly changing country or fall behind and struggle to keep it all going.”

The question remains: Will “modernization” come at the expense of workers, in the process robbing Canadians of a crown corporation meant to serve the public, or will it involve protecting good jobs and expanding vital services?

Which side are you on?

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