A rally in support of striking postal workers drew nearly 100 people to the steps of the downtown Canada Post office on Saturday afternoon, where labour leaders stressed the importance of stopping a trend towards a "two-tiered workforce" in Canada.
Among Canada Post's demands is to lower the wage for new employees to $19 per hour from the current $24 and to replace sick leave with a short-term disability plan, a trend B.C. Federation of Labour president Jim Sinclair said he's noticed elsewhere.
"When we fight these battles, we're fighting them not just for ourselves but we're fighting them for everybody," said Sinclair.
Most of those who attended the rally were in Prince George for a B.C. Fed convention at a nearby downtown hotel but postal workers were also on the scene. They carried placards and signs calling on Canada Post to "put profits back into services" and saying "we support our postal workers."
Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) Local 8-12 president Tami Brushey said Canada Post made a record profit of $284 million in 2009 and has added $1.2 billion to government coffers over 16 years.
Bonus cheques were issued two months ago to employees and management for meeting targets, money Brushey said should have been put into the pension plan, which she said is saddled with a $3-billion obligation due to a "pension holiday."
"This is not a corporation that is struggling to make ends meet, let's be very clear," Brushey said. "This is a corporation bent on improving their bottom line and doing so on the backs of the workers that have made them such an amazing success story," Brushy said.
Brushey said Canada Post should scrap so-called "superboxes" in new subdivisions and expand door-to-door delivery and add financial services to post offices in small towns where banks do not exist, saying it's done successfully in other countries.
Since 2006, the volume of letters delivered by Canada Post decreased by 17 per cent and last year flyers delivered by Canada Post dropped 11 per cent, parcels by eight per cent and letters by two per cent.
Postal workers have staged rotating strikes beginning with Winnipeg on Friday and moving to Hamilton on Saturday and Sunday. It's not known if a walkout will be staged in Prince George. "We'll get our heads up when the time comes and not before," Brushey said.
The sides are continuing to talk, Brushey said, "which is good."
There are about 150 CUPW members in the Prince George local which also covers Burns Lake, Vanderhoof and Mackenzie.
