With pressure mounting for an end to the Canada Post strike as it enters its third week, picketing workers remained steadfast as they walked the picket line on a blustery cold Friday morning outside a main Ottawa postal station.
“We’re doing this to ensure our future and to ensure the future of incoming employees,” David Jesion, a full-time letter carrier, said outside the Sandford-Fleming depot at the busy corner Industrial Avenue and Riverside Drive.
More than 55,000 postal workers across Canada went on strike two weeks ago, putting mail and parcel service at a standstill.
Among the main concerns for workers like Jesion are wage increases in line with inflation, maintenance of existing defined-benefits pensions, and improved health and safety benefits.
Canada Post veteran Daniel Weinkauf, who has spent 14 years as a letter carrier, says he’s had four knee surgeries and a shoulder replacement from carrying his mail satchel. At the same time, Weinkauf understands public frustration with the stop in service.
“I feel for the Canadian public,” he said. “I mean, we’re just like them. We’re basically looking at a wage that’s been stuck at 2018, 2019 cost of living. We are suffering economically and financially just like all other Canadians and push comes to shove, something had to be done, and unfortunately, this is where we are.”
Canada Post, meanwhile, is losing hundreds of millions per quarter and has started to temporarily lay off striking workers. The Crown Corporation announced last week it posted a $315 loss, before taxes, in the third quarter of this year. The corporation says it has lost more than $3-billion since 2018.
Federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon posted Wednesday on the social media platform X that a special federal mediator decided to temporarily suspend mediation between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
“After several intensive days of negotiation, his assessment is that parties remain too far apart on critical issues for mediation to be successful at this time,” MacKinnon wrote. “This pause in mediation activities will hopefully permit the parties to reassess their positions and return to the bargaining table with renewed resolve.”
Weinkauf works inside these days, but he’s hit the pavement as a picket captain and is seeking to combat what he calls public “misinformation,” particularly around comparisons between the postal service and private parcel delivery services.
“We’re mandated to deliver mail to every point in Canada,” Weinkauf said. “Parcel companies pick and choose where they deliver. They’ll not go 60 km, or 100 km, to deliver one parcel.”
CUPW said this week that Canada Post’s “full-on assault on good-paying full-time jobs,” is at stake.
“We hear from Canada Post that there is no intention of “gigifying” the workforce at Canada Post, but many of Canada Post’s proposals are directly aimed toward a race-to-the-bottom competition with multinational corporations,” CUPW said in a news release.
Several business groups have called on the federal government to put an end to the strike, including the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce.
