The Marxist-Leninist Daily

Some 90 doctors protest outside Conservative Cabinet Minister Joe Oliver's constitency office in Toronto to protest changes to exclude refugees from health care, May 11, 2012. Coordinated actions took place elsewhere across the country.

On Monday, June 18, doctors and health care workers in 13 cities across Canada are organizing a day of action to oppose the Harper government's barbaric and anti-human policy of excluding refugees from access to health care. The day of action is being organized by some of the doctors and health care workers who participated in the actions of May 11 in several Canadian cities to protest against the changes to the Interim Federal Health programs announced by the government in April 2012.

Under the announced policy, as of June 30, refugees and protected persons, refugee claimants, refused refugee claimants, applicants for Pre-Removal Risk Assessments, people detained by Canada Border Services Agency, and others will receive health care coverage only to access the services of doctors, nurses, and hospitals in emergencies. Medications and vaccines will be provided only to prevent or treat a disease that is considered a risk to public health or safety.

Eligibility for even this inadequate amount of health care will be further restricted once the anti-immigrant/refugee Bill C-31, the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, receives Royal Assent (expected later this month). Under the system to be created by Bill C-31, refugee claimants from "Designated Countries of Origin" and rejected refugee claimants will receive covered medical care only if it is deemed necessary to prevent or treat a disease posing a risk to public health or safety. Other groups (refugee claimants who have withdrawn or abandoned their claims or who have been found ineligible for referral to the Refugee Protection Division and applicants for a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment who have not previously made a refugee claim) will receive no health care coverage at all.

According to the Harperites there are no rights that a person is entitled to by virtue of being human, not even a right to life itself. The government is arbitrarily segregating people into categories in which varying degrees of human rights are recognized or, in some cases, no rights at all. TML hails the stand taken by doctors and other health care workers for the right of all to health care and denounces the barbarism of the Harper dictatorship.

Elimination of Jobs, Dismantling of Services and Threats Against the Workers

With the Harper government on its side, Canada Post keeps imposing its "Modern Post" on the postal workers, eliminating jobs and attacking all aspects of the working conditions, including health and safety. It continues to dismantle the services at a rapid rate and then uses the wrecking of the service as proof that Canada Post is not viable as a public postal service and must be privatized. The corporation is issuing threats to the workers that unless they agree to give up the working conditions which belong to them by right and are critical in defending and expanding the public postal service, Canada Post will not survive.

Postal workers have contempt for this morbid preoccupation with defeat and Canada Post's self-serving arguments to justify its wrecking of the public postal service so as to benefit private interests only.

Workers are defending themselves and the service they provide. Their courageous battle is taking many forms. They are waging a battle on the legal front to declare unconstitutional the back-to-work legislation that was passed by the Harper government at the end of June 2011 and to challenge the Harper government's choice of the arbitrator who is to decide their collective agreement. They are also resisting unsafe working conditions and the dismantling of services.

TML recently spoke with Louis Lang of the Ottawa Local of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers about various aspects of the situation facing the postal workers at this time.

TML: Please explain the situation in the Post Office in terms of the implementation of the back-to-work legislation that the Harper government passed against the postal workers at the end of June 2011.

Louis Lang: The union challenged the first arbitrator because he was not bilingual and had no experience in arbitration procedures. No meeting took place with that arbitrator. Ultimately, in January, the Court decided that arbitrator should not be used and ordered the government to replace him. Then another process started with a different arbitrator. This arbitrator happens to be an active member of the Conservative Party. He is bilingual and has experience in labour relations but the union is challenging him because of his connections with the Conservative Party. The union is also raising a problem of conflict of interest because this arbitrator was one of the main lawyers used by the Government of Canada in fighting the Public Service Alliance in that long drawn-out battle for equal pay for equal work, a huge grievance that has been going on since the 1980s, which turned into hundreds of millions of dollars worth of public money funding the anti-worker campaign.

The union says this is a conflict of interest and that he should have disqualified himself. Now the latest thing that we have heard is that a judge decided that no meeting should take place, that this person should not organize any meeting for negotiation purposes until there is a decision about his status. That is basically where everything stands.

Several times during this whole process the union has proposed that the two sides get together and try to work out their differences but the corporation has constantly refused to do that. There have not been any meetings between the two parties. As long as this goes on the old collective agreement is still in force and everyone is working under that agreement.

Elimination of Jobs and Deterioration of Working Conditions

In terms of the working conditions, many things are happening. The corporation is completing its postal transformation project. This involves a lot of things. It involves the installation of many more optical multi-line character reader machines that are capable of sorting the mail very quickly and sequencing regular mail into the walks of the letter carriers. As a result of that, every letter carrier depot has to be reviewed in terms of their walks because the letter carriers spend less time sorting their mail. This means that every letter carrier depot has to be restructured. On the average, depending on the level of motorization that is taking place, we lose between 10 and 15 per cent of the walks for letter carriers in each of the stations. The fact that letter carriers are able to spend more time out on the streets means the walks are longer and fewer walks are said to be needed.

Because of motorization, there are some places outside downtown where 100 per cent of the routes are done with vans. What is happening is that letter carriers are doing more work on their routes and, because they are motorized, they are also doing the work that the Mail Service Couriers (MSCs) were doing before.

MSCs are truck drivers who did things like empty the big letter boxes and pick up parcels from customers. Because of the motorization of the routes, the letter carriers now have to do the work of the MSCs.

Now each letter carrier depot which was serviced by the MSCs is self-sufficient. The MSC fleets have been severely depleted. In Ottawa, we probably had over 130 MSCs and there are not going to be many more than 35 left at best.

The problem then becomes how to find jobs for these people. They are MSCs because that is what they opted for and now they have to go into letter carrier type jobs. Some of them are being carried as surplus because the corporation is waiting to place them when people retire. The corporation is not filling the vacancies and there are less and less positions all the time. The corporation is just abolishing positions. This is basically the way the postal transformation is affecting the outside workers.

The postal transformation is affecting inside workers as well because they are the ones that have to work on the multi-line machines and the machines are very fast. The corporation is trying to cut corners there too. Normally at least two or three people are needed on these machines because one person has to feed the machine and the other people have to run around trying to empty it when the different sortation bins are full. The corporation is doing all kinds of crazy things to cut corners and get as much out of the workers as possible. These machines are placed side by side and the corporation's aim is to have one person cover two machines.There are a lot of safety issues for the inside workers, a lot of problems in terms of the speed and the extent of the work they have to do. Having to deal with these machines that sort the mail very quickly, without enough people to empty them, forces a very quick pace of work. It results in a lot of accidents. The equipment is slightly different too. It gives rise to injuries because all kinds of clutter piles up. It is not as clean an operation as it was before.

The other problem is that the corporation will only sequence mail at night. That means that the vast majority of the people are being put on evening and night shifts. This new sequencing is eliminating day shift positions for the inside workers.

As far as the letter carriers are concerned, they took action in Winnipeg, Montreal and other places against the bad and hazardous conditions that were forced on them with the postal transformation and the sequencing of mail. These issues are still in arbitration. An arbitrator is supposed to decide on the issue of multi-bundles, whether letter carriers have to carry a bundle on their forearms and the letters in their hands. The demand of the union is that the arbitrator declare that the corporation is imposing unsafe conditions by not allowing the letter carriers to put short and long mail together with the flat mail, by demanding that they be kept separate. The union says that even if the inside portion of the work takes longer, the letter carriers can prepare their mail better in the depot before doing their walks and it will be safer to deliver. Arbitration hearings have been held on the two bundle method and more are scheduled between now and December. In the meantime the letter carriers are forced to work in an unsafe manner wherever sequencing of mail has been implemented.

Besides the issue of the health and safety of the workers, the net result of this is a massive elimination of positions. This is happening at the same time that vacancies are not getting filled. Instead the corporation is using stop gap measures to keep the staffing of these places low. They are using attrition. They are not replacing people who leave, thinking that as positions are eliminated because of the postal transformation, the workers who become surplus will be used to fill the vacancies. The thing that it is important to understand is that while those positions are vacant, it means that fewer people are doing more work. Sometimes people are not able to give proper service because the staffing is not adequate. What the corporation is doing basically is undermining their own business in order to show that it is no good, that we have to privatize it.

Closure of Retail Outlets

The other aspect that they are working on is the closure of retail outlets all across the country. A big one was closed in Montreal about one month ago and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) there has organized demonstrations against this. Here in Ottawa they have announced the closure of the Vanier retail outlet, which we are fighting with the help of members of the community and businesses in the area who rely on the postal service. There are 13 retail outlets that we know of across the country on the chopping block. What the corporation does is open franchises within half a block or a block of their own retail office and then six months later they go to the retail office and say that the revenues are down, this retail office is no longer profitable and they are going to have to close it. These retail offices provide many services that are crucial for the survival of the small businesses that have sprung up with the advent of the

internet. The franchises that Canada Post is opening in drugstores and corner stores are eliminating a reliable service to the community and allowing the corporation to cut back on day shift jobs at the post office. It also serves to discourage people from using the mail. At the same time, the clerks who work in these franchises make very low wages and have no benefits or pensions. Whatever the working conditions are in the drugstore or corner store are their working conditions.

It is not surprising that Canada Post's new CEO Deepak Chopra comes from a company that is in the business of creating electronic kiosks to replace post offices in communities across the country. Before Harper appointed him to head the post office, Chopra was President and CEO of the Canada and Latin America Region of Pitney Bowes, a global mailing and communication technology company with two million customers worldwide.

Threats Against Workers and Fraudulent Company Arguments

TML: Chopra recently presented a very bleak picture of the future of Canada Post to the Globe and Mail. He listed a series of problems he says are threatening Canada Post's survival -- the drop in mail volume, increased competition, what he calls the pension shortfall, the equity pay ruling and so on. He says Canada Post recorded a loss of $253 million in 2011. He does not explain any of that but merely states that unless workers agree to concessions in basically every aspect of their working conditions, Canada Post has no future. Can you elaborate on what he says?

LL: The most important thing about this is that the corporation is not presenting a true picture of how their business works. According to Canada Post's own Annual Report for 2011, the corporation had an after-tax loss of $188 million. The CUPW pointed out recently that one expense last year in the amount of $63 million was a one-time payment the corporation was required to make as a result of amendments to the 1985 Pension Benefits Standard Act. Another major expense is related to the Supreme Court decision last year on the pay equity complaint filed by the Public Service Alliance. Canada Post refuses to reveal the actual cost but it is estimated to be close to $200 million. These expenses will not occur next year. There is also the cost of the strike-lockout, which according to CUPW's estimates amounted to $60 million. This is Mr. Chopra's "financial crisis" which he is using to attack the wages, benefits and working conditions of postal workers.

It is hypocritical, to say the least, for Canada Post to blame the pay equity ruling for revenue problems. The pay equity grievance occurred sometime in the 1980s. Canada Post lost and, instead of following the decision of the arbitrator and paying the people equal pay for equal work, they continued to fight the grievance for 25-30 years. A very large portion of the debt they owe now is the compound interest on the payments that accumulated because Canada Post refused to accept rulings at all levels. As well, they are not saying how many lawyers they had to hire to find loopholes to get around paying public service workers the proper wages they deserved.

It is also ridiculous for Canada Post to blame the rotating strikes and the lockout for the loss in 2011. They are the ones who created the lockout. Before the lockout, the union held rotating strikes and the financial damage was minimal, but the corporation together with the Harper government decided to lock us out in order to give the government an excuse to legislate us back to work so that a contract would be forced down our throats. There was no intention on the part of the corporation to negotiate at any time. Now they claim that the revenue loss for that month should be part of the deficit. They are the ones who shut the doors of the post office.

As far as the pension shortfall is concerned, Chopra is spreading disinformation on that as well. He must know that his calculations are based on "market yields" and are not the proper way to assess the true value of the pension fund. Because such calculations are based on the performance of the market at a specific time, the result is bound to be unrealistically high or low and thus useless in accurately assessing the actual value of the fund. Clearly Chopra's alarmist statements are not intended to ensure the health of the fund but to create hysteria and convince people that the corporation cannot afford to provide proper pensions to workers who have earned the right to retire with security.

The interesting thing is that they use these calculations to show the opposite too. About three years ago when the markets were high, they announced the pension plans were in surplus and they wanted to take some of that money and use it in their general funds. This is not real money. This is an assessment of the value of the pension plans at a particular moment. It is just a picture in time. They decided that they would take a pension holiday. There was no holiday for the workers. We continued to contribute to the pension plans but the corporation said they did not have to and they took a holiday until the union complained and stopped them. Within three or four months of that, the stock markets collapsed again. Because they were not paying their share of course there was a shortfall. In the good times they take a holiday and in the bad they want the workers to pay more.

The corporation wants to damage the defined benefit plan and they want to create a crisis so they can say that these kinds of plans are not feasible The most interesting thing is that it was they who demanded a change back in the 1980-90 period. Our pension plan was a superannuation plan, part of the public service, and it was held by the government. They were not allowed to invest it anywhere. In those days, these funds were loaned out to provincial governments and public institutions at very low interest for various projects. The funds were secured by the government; they were not allowed to fluctuate. All their right wing think tanks -- Conservatives and Liberals -- got together in 1990 and decided that there was this huge fund that was available to beef up the stock market. There was a huge battle at that time. They changed the law to make the pension funds available for investment. We opposed it at that time and said that the next step would be to attack the defined benefit plans. Now these same people say that because these things are invested the defined benefit plans are no longer feasible. It is a crisis of their own making.

The next step for them is to increase the workers' premiums and the step after that is to say that even that is not enough and new employees have to be put in a defined contribution plan. That is the way these people are going. To present the pension funds as underfunded is the biggest hypocrisy. They do not tell the history of the pension and they do not admit this is a dishonest way of assessing the value of the plans.

Setting the Ground for Further Privatization

They are painting this bleak picture because they want to change the nature of the Post Office from that of a public service to a completely privatized one that specifically serves the huge monopolies. They want to undermine the universal postal service so that it is no longer there for Canadians. The only way they can do that is to deteriorate the service, close down retail outlets, discourage people from using first class mail, and constantly attack the workers. They exaggerate the loss of mail volume. When Chopra says that first class mail is going down because of the internet, he does not explain that at the same time the internet is creating more volume use of the postal services. Canada Post signed a contract with E-Bay and many other companies have been created because of the popularity of the internet. These businesses rely completely on the postal service and the volume of mail they generate is increasing very rapidly. The fact that people can use faxes and emails has reduced some first class mail but not to the extent they claim. They had to admit that the last Christmas rush was one of the highest volume Christmas rushes Canada Post has ever had.

The aim of the "Modern Post" is to hand over to private interests the most profitable sectors of the postal service, like parcel delivery, first class mail and courier type services, especially in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor and leave the unprofitable parts to the Post Office. We know this because as President and CEO of Pitney Bowes Canada Mr. Chopra presented these views in a written submission to the 2008 Strategic Review of Canada Post. This is what serves the interest of Pitney Bowes in making maximum profit. In addition to developing the technology to supply electronic kiosks, this company is a major supplier of postage metering machines all over the world. They also provide mail preparation and pre-sortation services and other postal related services. Pitney Bowes' rate of profit is directly related to their ability to influence Canada Post to provide "pricing incentives" for postage purchased at a kiosk or by a postage meter, as well as incentives for different levels of mail preparation.

The appointment of Chopra to head Canada Post clearly raises an issue of conflict of interest since it is in Pitney Bowes' interest to pressure Canada Post to provide financial rewards for the technologies that the company is developing.

It is important to remember that when Chopra talks about the survival of the Post Office, he does not mean saving Canada Post as a public service and fulfilling its responsibility to provide universal postal service to all Canadians. Chopra like Harper, does not believe that we need a communications service across the country. According to him, this is an old and outmoded idea that should be abandoned in favour of joint ventures with the private sector along the same lines as those Pitney Bowes has with Canada Post.

In addition to joint ventures with the private sector, Chopra presented another view to the Strategic Review Panel, which was later adopted by the Harper government, that Canada Post should adopt a "flexible conception of universal service." In simple terms this means that we should abandon the present definition of universal service which requires Canada Post to provide first class mail service at the same price to all Canadians. That is the goal of Chopra and the Harper government, to force the workers to sacrifice wages, benefits and working conditions and create a post office totally in the service of monopoly corporations where the universal obligation becomes a thing of the past.

June 18 National Day of Action to Stop the Cuts to Refugee Health Care

June 18 National Day of Action to Stop the Cuts to Refugee Health Care

Elimination of Jobs, Dismantling of Services and Threats Against the Workers

Elimination of Jobs and Deterioration of Working Conditions

Closure of Retail Outlets

Threats Against Workers and Fraudulent Company Arguments

Setting the Ground for Further Privatization