Members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) have voted overwhelmingly against Canada Post's “final offer” and are currently looking to continue negotiations.
CUPW Local 812 president Nicole Chouinard spoke to The Citizen about the aftermath of the vote and its effects on the local branch.
“There was a lot of happiness actually about it,” said Chouinard. “If you could call it that, we all feel like that was the way it was meant to be. We're confident that this is a step in the right direction. So everybody's got good spirits about it.”
CUPW, which represents 55,000 workers in Canada and more than 200 workers in Prince George and Mackenzie, deemed the offered contract unsatisfactory due to delays and company restructuring to allow part-time workers at Canada Post.
“There were multiple reasons to vote no to the offer from Canada Post,” said Chouinard. “With the government stepping in multiple times over the last eight months, it's really stepped on our right to collectively negotiate a fair agreement with the employer. … Partially, it was the nature of the offer from Canada Post. It doesn't meet either the needs of the workers at Canada Post or the needs of the Canadian public. It was definitely an issue.”
She added that she finds the attempt to create more part-time workers at Canada Post not viable with the current economy and for the workers that may fill these roles.
“The part-time jobs that they're trying to create — we do not live in a country where a part-time job is good enough to pay bills,” said Chouinard. “People cannot survive off of a part-time job. And Canada Post is looking to transition to as many part-time jobs as they can. Further to that, there was the pension and the benefits. They've got a whole bunch of part-time workers and they don't get a pension or benefits for the first six months after becoming permanent, which for us, it can take years to even become permanent, and to add six more months waiting for benefits on top of that is just insulting.”
Currently, the national CUPW is looking to get back to the bargaining table with Canada Post, while local CUPW branches like Chouinard’s are returning to business as usual.
“We are just back to work as normal,” Chouinard said. “This has been going on for us for almost two years. So today doesn't feel significantly different than any of the days that we've been through waiting for this to be resolved. So it's back to work as normal for us locally. Nationally, our negotiators have reached out to Canada and asked to go back to the bargaining table.”
Chouinard, while speaking with The Citizen, explained what Canada Post needs to bring to the table in order to reach an agreement.
“A lot of the changes that Canada Post wants to make to reconfigure how the work of letter carriers in particular gets done,” said Chouinard. “I think a lot of that needs to be put on the back burner. The reality is, in order for Canada Post to implement the changes that they want to implement, it will actually cost significant amounts of money for them to change how we do our job. … It's a struggle because Canada Post has been saying for a long time that they're broke, but they've also been strategically investing.
“As a union, that's hard for us to believe when we know they've spent hundreds of millions in investments on buildings and electric vehicles and whatnot. For them to be saying that we're the problem and they can't afford to pay us is quite insulting. We're just asking for them to just let us keep doing our jobs. That is a non-starter for them — to completely reconfigure letter carrier delivery.”
She added that while in the short term these issues that are being negotiated may not look significant, in the long run Canada Post and its workers may be faced with severe consequences due to its recent actions.
“The reality in the long term is that all these changes will have an impact,” said Chouinard. “You've got the nervousness of people near retirement who understand that changes to the pension plan that we pay into may affect their retirement. You've got newer people like myself wondering how retirement even would look for me in 20 years if these changes go through. So there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of nervousness.
“Again, when you're part of a union of this size and you're going up against a corporation of this size — it is a very big picture situation. This is what's going to affect us now, what might affect us in the next round of bargaining and how it might look 10, 20, 30 years from now. We're just trying to not do anything that's going to have extremely detrimental effects in the long run.”
Despite her dissatisfaction with the current situation, she wanted to reassure those in Prince George that job action is currently unlikely.
“I can't stress strongly enough — the union does not want to go on strike,” said Chouinard. “We can't control if Canada Post chooses to lock us out. That would be bad for business, honestly. For a business that is crying broke, saying they're losing millions of dollars a day — for them to lock us out would just be insulting to Canadians, in my opinion. So again, the union has no intention of going on strike so long as we can continue to negotiate. But I understand Canadians are uncertain — myself included.”
