There is a lot of misinformation being circulated throughout the Canadian mainstream media regarding the current postal strike affecting Canadians from coast to coast. The most common misconception we postal workers hear is that Canadian taxpayers are responsible for postal worker’s wages. This is untrue.
Canada Post is a crown corporation. A crown corporation is a company that is owned by the government but is not financed by the government. Canada Post sells products at the post office and the revenue from those sales is what pays postal workers wages. There have been instances where Canada Post has turned substantial profits, in which case those profits have gone back to the Canadian government instead of back to the workers whose backs that money was made on.
The second huge misconception that’s being spread around is that Canada Post is broke. This is also false. It’s simply a scare tactic meant to scare the workers into taking less than what they deserve. It’s also meant to sway public opinion. The general public sees these crazy losses, like $748 million in one year and they naturally think, well this poor company is broke, how can those workers demand a pay raise and better working conditions?
That’s exactly why Canada Post has created this financial crisis. To get the public against us. And it’s working. Canada Post has manufactured this financial crisis. I will prove it to you.
First, if any corporation in the corporate world loses $748 million in a year, is it not the CEO who gets fired? It’s the CEO’s business model that loses the company money, not the workers carrying out the CEO’s business model. Why hasn’t Doug Ettinger been fired if this financial crisis at Canada Post is indeed factual?
Second, Canada Post has admitted during a question period with members of parliament to giving upper management millions of dollars in bonuses over the past couple of years. If a company is losing money and heading toward bankruptcy, then why would the people in charge be getting bonuses? Does that make any sense? No. Because this financial crisis is manufactured.
Next, Canada Post is a 91% shareholder with Purolator. Purolator’s revenue over the past four years is averaging around $2.5 billion. That’s quite a lot of revenue. Seems to me that Canada Post has a lot of money, but they don’t want the public to know that.
Another thing Canada Post keeps saying in the media is that they’ve lost a huge chunk of the parcel business in Canada since COVID-19 and as a result need to change the business model to include weekend delivery. Well, Canada Post’s biggest competitor in the parcel industry in Canada is Purolator. Are they losing business to themself? Seems fishy to me. They’re using this argument to justify cutting full-time positions and hiring a bunch of gig workers to work on weekends. But as you can clearly see this argument has giant holes in it.
Another very important piece of information that hasn’t been shared with the public is Canada Post’s sustainability plan. This is public information that any Canadian can research on their own. It’s available on the Canada Post website. Canada Post released a sustainability plan to spend $4 billion over the course of five years. The plan was implemented to help secure Canada Post’s future in the parcel business for many years to come and included building a brand new, state-of-the-art processing facility in Scarborough, Ontario, upgrading the vehicle fleet, installing telematics in all existing and new vehicles, which is literally spyware installed in vehicles which they use to monitor and in some cases discipline workers, and upgrading the equipment in existing processing facilities.
If you divide $4 billion by five years, you get $800 million. Kind of strange that they’re reporting a $748 million loss. I think not, I think it’s clever accounting. I don’t believe investments are losses and I’m sure the general public would agree with me on that point.
The last point to dispel the rumour that Canada Post is broke and also that we are not taxpayer-funded is: If we’re taxpayer-funded and the financial crisis is real, doesn’t the federal government simply bail out Canada Post? The feds had no problem bailing out Air Canada in 2019 to the tune of $6 billion and they’re a private company.
If Canada Post was in fact suffering the losses they claim to be suffering and we’re already taxpayer-funded, why not just bail them out? It’s because the financial losses are simply a fallacy meant to pit the Canadian public against working-class, taxpaying people who simply want what they deserve.
Canada Post employs 55,000 workers. We are all taxpayers. We collectively pay around $500 million in federal income tax every year. We pay property taxes in all our communities and we pay PST on all the goods we buy every day, which goes into the province’s coffers.
We are working-class people who deserve safe working conditions, a living wage and to retire with dignity. The starting wage at Canada Post was $21.83 in 2008. Today the starting wage is $22.68. That’s a four per cent raise in 16 years. Whereas the living wage in 2008 was $16.74 and it’s now $27.05; that’s an increase of 62%.
At that same time, gas prices have increased by 63%, rentals have increased by 184%, milk has gone up 45%, eggs have gone up 100% and sirloin beef has increased by 107%. There’s a problem with these numbers. The living wage is the hourly wage two earners in a household need to make to support a family of four. That means new hires at Canada Post are well below the living wage in almost every community in BC. In fact, it takes a postie six years of full-time work to finally get up to the average living in BC. It’s not a matter of greedy postal workers, it’s a matter of we’re tired of working full-time and barely making ends meet.
One generation ago a postal worker or grocery store worker could raise a family on one income. Now, two grocery store workers or postal workers are finding it extremely difficult to do. Canada Post’s CEO makes half a million dollars a year, plus he gives himself raises while supposedly running the business into the ground.
We ask for a 21% raise over four years and we’re greedy. He tells the Canadian public he’s lost his company $748 million this year and people feel sorry for him. When did working-class people start hating other working-class people for fighting for what they deserve?
The last thing is about the latest news regarding how negotiations have come to a stall again. Canada Post hasn’t had to bargain in good faith with our union for a very long time. Canadian governments, both Conservative and Liberal, have made it so these companies no longer have to bargain in good faith because the second unions go on strike they legislate us back to work. Once we get legislated back to work, we lose. That’s why our wages have fallen so low. We lose our only tool in bargaining when they take away our right to strike.
Canada Post came into this round of bargaining under the assumption that they wouldn’t have to negotiate with the union and the feds would once again swoop in and save them. Well, as most of you now know, labour minister Steve MacKinnon made a statement on November 28 that the government would not be stepping in this time and now Canada Post is panicking. When Canada Post panics they always resort to scare tactics, and this time is no different. Instead of taking what the labour minister said and doing the right thing by returning to the bargaining table with a renewed sense of urgency to get this deal done, they’ve begun illegally laying off striking workers.
If you were on the picket line, making little to no money (we are making $56 a day while on strike) instead of a paycheque and your employer started laying off your coworkers, that would probably scare you into pressuring your union leaders to sign a contract with haste, would it not? What happens when you sign a contract with haste is you end up taking concessions and we cannot afford more concessions.
We’ve lost too many rounds of bargaining, and we literally cannot afford to lose another. We don’t want the public to suffer and we don’t want to hold the public hostage but what we’re doing is going to benefit the public in the long run. We postal workers care about the marginalized populations in our communities. Evidence of this was the fact that we broke picket protocol to deliver socioeconomic cheques across the country on November 20 and 21.
We love our jobs and we love our customers. Our fight is not with the public, it is with Canada Post. The only way to get them to bargain in good faith is to do what we’re doing. We’re sorry for any inconvenience. If it were up to us, this thing would be settled already, and you’d all get first-class service every time you dealt with Canada Post but this isn’t up to us. Canada Post has the money and therefore Canada Post has the power to settle this thing.
Please be kind to us and keep in mind that we are people and some of us have families we’re trying to support and while this strike is happening, we’ve lost our ability to do that. No one wants this but it’s our right as Canadians to strike and it’s the only way our employer has ever given us what we deserve. To everyone who has come out to support us on the picket lines, it’s people and organizations like you that give us the courage to do what we must do. Your continued support will get us through these hard times and when the time comes, CUPW will be there to reciprocate the love. Thank you, everyone.
~ Noah Bourcier, president, Local 808, Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Born and raised in Powell River since 1986.
