Around 150 Canadian postal workers yesterday took to the streets inWinnipeg, the capital and of the province of Manitoba, in the first legal strike in more than 13years after last-minute talks between the CUPW union and Canada Post failed to deliver anagreement.
The 24-hour strike in Winnipeg will be the first in a series of strikes tocontinue in other locations which will be announced later. The city has been chosen as the locationfor the first strike activity because it was the first to be impacted by Canada Post’smodernisation programme.
“The purpose of this strike activity is to encourage Canada PostCorporation to abandon their proposals for significant concessions and instead negotiate solutionsto the very real problems that are being experienced by 48,000 postal workers,” the postal unionCUPW stressed.
“The results have been a sharp deterioration of service to the public aswell as a host of health and safety problems experienced by postal workers due to the new workmethods and equipment,” the union claimed.
In a late attempt to avoid strike action, Canada Post submitted a newoffer to CUPW the day before the strike was due to start saying it would be willing to put acontroversial short-term disability programme on hold, to be reviewed by a joint union-managementcommittee. However, this proposal was also turned down by the union.
Commenting on Canada Post’s latest offer, CUPW acknowledged that someminor adjustments were made to its proposal but criticised there was almost no movement on otherissues.
Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton pointed out that the postal operatorhas been trying to read a deal with CUPW the whole week. “It’s unfortunate that the people ofWinnipeg and Manitoba are seeing a disruption to their service. It’s completely unnecessary. Weshould be spending all of our time and have our combined focus on negotiating a deal. Hopefully wecan avoid further strike activity by the union and get a deal so that we don’t disrupt more of ourcustomers.”
The union said that it has been able to make some important progress inits negotiations with Canada Post during the past seven months. “We have convinced CPC to drop someof the concessions that they initially demanded. However, we have yet to receive a serious offerfrom management which addresses the very real problems experienced by postal workers. Managementhas yet to drop its major demands to eliminate our sick leave and impose an inferior short-termdisability plan and significantly lower pay rates and pensions for new hires.”
