Across the country, members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) are preparing to hit the picket line. Strike committees are being assembled; picket signs are being printed; picket captains are being recruited and trained; activists are holding shop-floor meetings; demonstrations are being held — and we haven’t even taken a strike-vote, yet! Canada Post has been preparing for this fight for years. They have presented the most regressive package of demands we have seen in a generation and they’re counting on Stephen Harper to ram them through.
STD? No way!
One of the most important concessions on the table is a plan to take away our paid sick leave, and replace it with a Short Term Disability (STD) plan. Postal workers seem to get every flu bug that comes along. Everyday, we handle thousands of envelopes that have been licked by countless people. Add to that the number of slips, trips, and falls letter carriers face on their routes and you can see how important our sick days are to us.
We currently get 16 paid, bankable sick days per year. Most postal workers do not use all of their sick days, but many do — and they need them. Canada Post wants to replace this with a plan that would reduce our sick leave to seven days per year, paid at only 70% of wages. The new plan would shift a substantial portion of the costs onto the EI fund, thus sticking the rest of Canada’s workers with the bill. This plan is not just an attack on the workers at Canada Post, but everyone who pays into the EI system.
The STD plan would be overseen and administered by a private contractor who would have final say over whether or not a claim was approved. Canada Post is demanding that this process be “non-grievable.” This means that postal workers will have absolutely no recourse when their claim is denied. Currently, Manulife is contracted to harass sick and injured workers at Canada Post and there is every indication that this new portfolio would fall into their lap, too. Anyone who has had to deal with a Manulife agent second-guessing their doctor will know what this means.
Divide the shop floor? No way!
Another disgusting demand from Canada Post is the setting up of a two-tiered structure for its workers. Under this plan, all new employees hired by Canada Post would get a lower wage, second-class benefits, and an unsecured pension plan. What’s worse is that they would never get the wages and benefits that current CUPW members enjoy. With huge numbers of CUPW members set to retire in the next few years, this move would have an immediate impact.
Two-tiered pay scales are a classic tool of the bosses to impose a long-term decline in working conditions and weaken unions. One only has to look at the grocery store chains in Canada to see where this leads. A couple of decades ago, people working in most grocery stores earned a living wage; they had real benefits, they had pension plans. What has happened? One by one, the grocery chains introduced two-tiered systems into their collective agreements. They dramatically slashed wages to near minimum wage for all new employees. Without strong opposition from the union leadership, workers voted for these changes thinking it wouldn’t affect them personally. They were wrong.
The bosses leaned on the senior employees to beat down the junior ones. Then when the staff reached a tipping point and there were more new employees than old ones, they reversed it. They turned their fire on the senior employees and leaned on the junior ones to pass the votes. It is a classic divide and conquer tactic. This is what management at Canada Post is planning.
Figures never lie, but liars can always figure
Canada Post has come up with some rather creative accounting methods to justify their demands. The truth is a little too inconvenient. They plead poverty in an attempt to convince their employees and the public that these cuts are necessary. They talk about the sorry state of the world economy and the need for Canada Post to compete in this environment. They must create a crisis to make their changes.
My favourite creative accounting method employed by the spinsters in the corporation is the reporting of profits and revenue. They can’t just give us the straight numbers, because everyone would see that Canada Post is actually doing quite well. They don’t tell us that we’re making X many millions of dollars in profit. No, they tell us that their revenues are X many millions of dollars below plan. As in, “we planned to make X but only made Y,” or “our revenues are $200-million below plan.” Nobody points out that their plan was a joke from the beginning and they never had any intention of achieving those benchmarks.
The truth, as always, is concrete. Canada Post has been in the black for 15 years. Canada Post has actually returned over $1-billion in dividends to its only shareholder, the Canadian government. In fact, in 2009 (for when the latest information is available), in the midst of a global economic meltdown, Canada Post had its best year on record. They made their largest profit in corporate history!
They say cut back, we say fight back!
Management at Canada Post has been preparing this fight for years. They have spent the last few years ramming the STD plan down the throats of the other smaller bargaining units at the company. The UPCE (clerical staff) walked the picket line two years ago in an attempt to fight against it. APOC (the supervisors union) rolled over without a fight, as usual. One by one, they have pushed this plan onto everyone else. They were calculated steps.
Their strategy is to push CUPW onto the picket line and wait on the government to legislate us back to work. They hope to present the STD plan as a normal thing that everyone else has already agreed to. They want to make it as easy as possible for the government or an arbitrator to agree to cut our sick days. Canada Post has no intention of really bargaining. They want a fight. And they’ll get one.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has a reputation for being one of the most militant unions in the country. Their string of illegal strikes in the 70s and 80s won major improvements, not just for themselves, but all Canadian workers. The union has been mobilizing its members ever since it became clear what upper management was planning. We are ready to strike and strike hard.
But CUPW members have to be prepared to push this struggle beyond a regular strike if we are going to win. We need to be prepared to rally the rest of the labour movement behind us. We need to be prepared to take the fight to the politicians. But most importantly, we need to be prepared to defy the back-to-work legislation when it comes. Every substantial gain CUPW has made has been through illegal strike action. We either have the right to strike or we do not. We are either prepared to fight for our sick days or we are not. There is no middle ground.
