Monday, December 9, 2024
Postal Workers Persevere in Their Fight
for
Their Rights and Dignity
Strike Enters Fourth Week
North Fraser Valley Depot
in BC, health care workers join postal workers' picket,
December
4, 2024.
• Canadian Union of Postal Workers Pickets Ontario MPs' Offices
Postal
Workers Persevere in Their Fight for
Their Rights and Dignity
Strike Enters Fourth Week
Calgary, December 4, 2024
The strike by the 55,000 members of the Canadian Union of
Postal Workers (CUPW) has entered its fourth week. Postal workers from
coast to coast to coast continue to stand strong in defence of their
right to improved wages, safety on the job, job security and protection
of their pensions. Canada Post is trying to strip away health and safety
protection for workers and turn secure jobs into precarious low paid
gig jobs. Postal workers are determined to stop these attacks.
In communities across the country labour councils and provincial
federations along with workers from many different unions have joined
the postal workers' picket lines, along with small business owners and
customers.
Negotiations between Canada Post and the Union, with a
mediator appointed by the federal government, broke off on
November 28
and since then there have been exchanges through the mediator.
On
December 1 Canada Post provided what it called a comprehensive
framework, to which the Union responded with its own proposals on
December 5.
Canada Post's response on December 6 to the Union's proposals contained
"drastic changes and rollbacks that no union in the world would ever
accept," CUPW reported.
CUPW spokesperson Jim Gallant in a televised interview with CTV News
said, "Canada Post is moving in the opposite direction than we need to
get to a negotiated collective agreement." Gallant said the company's
proposal is not a matter of "one step back" but "multiple steps back."
The Union's response to Canada Post's "comprehensive
framework" reiterated its four key issues: A wage increase to
keep up
with inflation; prioritization of workers' health and safety on
the
job, including getting rid of schemes like Separate Sort
from
Delivery (SSD) which increase the danger of
injuries to workers who already suffer the second highest rate
of
disabling injury among workers under federal jurisdiction;
maintenance
of the defined-benefit pension plan for all Canada Post workers;
and
expansion of public postal services that postal operations in
other
countries have
successfully operated for many years, including postal banking
and
electric vehicle charging stations.
Canada Post continues to attack the workers who are exercising their right to strike. At the outset of the strike it announced that benefits would be cut off, causing tremendous hardship to many workers, including denying payments for life-saving medications for workers and their families.
As well, although there is an agreement between Canada Post and the Union for the delivery of welfare and other social service payments during the strike, Canada Post has unilaterally imposed an impossible system for delivery of these payments which has led to delays. This is an effort to lessen public support for the strikers, which is failing as community members regularly join picket lines.
Canada Post has also issued layoff notices to some striking workers, without informing the Union of who is being laid off and why. Every effort is being made to bypass the Union and single out individual workers, to undermine the strike.
Postal workers joined by workers in all sectors of the economy, continue to show their determination to fight for their rights and dignity and keep Canada Post a public service for all Canadians. A public post office is vital for nation-building and protecting the interests of everyone in cities and rural areas as well.
All Out to Join the Picket Lines and Support the Postal Workers!
Montreal
Toronto
Mississauga
Sturgeon
Falls
Windsor
Winnipeg
Saskatoon
Edmonton
Wetaskiwin
Calgary
Powell
River
Yellowknife
(Photos: TML, CUPW national and
local Facebook pages)
Canadian Union of Postal Workers Pickets
Ontario
MPs' Offices
CUPW Scarborough Local pickets MP Shaun Chen's office,
December 3, 2024.
On December 3 CUPW locals in Ontario picketed several MPs' offices. The following is the text of a leaflet issued by the Scarborough Local for the picket.
MPs Must Stand Up for What Is Right!
It is time for the corporation to give orders to its appointed subjects on Canada Post Board of Directors, to do what is legally correct! The charade must stop, where Canada Post is refusing to negotiate a fair labour contract with its employees in the CUPW.
Canada Post principals have no real authority of their own. If the race to the bottom they are seeking to impose on its workers, are the directives of the Liberal government, the Members of Parliament who belong to the Liberal Party must speak out. They must demand that their government orders Canada Post to do the right thing and agree to the demands of the Postal Workers. There is nothing extravagant about our contract demands!!!
Canada Post has acted, in the past, as the bearer of sad news for the entire working class and people. They have implemented methods of discrimination against working people, such as its treatment of women, the treatment of part time workers and the unequal treatment of its rural work force, the continuing disrespect towards First Nation workers who are not allowed to play any significant role in the Canada Post workforce, the flourishing of racism, and so on. Now they are seeking direct attacks on our pension rights and benefits and workplace rights.
The attacks which are going on against postal workers now, with the attempts to roll back workplace rights and health and safety issues, must be stopped.
A better Canada Post must start with the proper treatment of those who daily process, create and deliver the wealth which goes into the bank account of Canada Post.
A better Canada Post cannot start with reducing the workers into poverty, nor by introducing methods of work akin to indentured and slave-like conditions.
Longer hours of delivering and larger areas of responsibility, using workers as machines, creating more precarious part time work and cutting back on full-time work, are not solutions to anything but are attacks on the workforce. The gutting of the long fought for workplace rights from the Collective Agreement, cannot be accepted. This giving of new powers to bully the workforce is not progressive but the reintroduction in the workplace of the power of slaveowners -- not needed in these modern times. It will introduce fights beyond anything that has been seen to date in the workplace. Workers will stand up for their dignity!!
We are calling on the Members of Parliament to uphold their own responsibilities to the working people who have supported them in seeking elections. The working people need your support now in demanding that the government brings an end to these stubborn actions by its own corporation.
It is more than a year that Canada Post has wasted in the negotiation process. We workers had no choice but to follow the process and take strike actions to use our Charter rights in these negotiations. Rights mean something! The MPs and their government must respect this. The corporation must order Canada Post to agree to the demands of the Union and to open up the doors to resume the service and deliver the people's mail from coast to coast to coast as we normally do daily.
We Will Keep Fighting Until We Win!!
Members of Parliament must stand up and demand that the government orders its CPC Board of Directors to immediately end the oppression and settle the 2024 CUPW contract!!
Learie Charles,
President CUPW Scarborough Local
Scarborough
Welland
Windsor
Owen Sound
Denounce State-Organized Attacks on Workers' Right to Defend Their Claims and Working Conditions – Stand with Postal Workers!
Red Deer, December 2, 2024
The current Canada Post strike started just three days after the federal government issued an order for binding arbitration to negate the struggle between dockworkers and employers at the ports of Montreal and Quebec City and the ports in BC. This state interference in the dockworkers' struggle was preceded last August by a government order to negate negotiations and force binding arbitration in the struggle between rail workers and their employers, Canadian National (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC). Prior to that in June of this year, the government also negated the struggle between WestJet mechanics and the company by imposing binding arbitration after the mechanics issued a strike notice. All these government interventions have occurred during the present negotiations between postal workers organized in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and Canada Post. In fact, the most recent contract between CUPW organized workers and their employer is the result of government imposed binding arbitration to negate their struggle using a back-to-work order in 2018.
In a class society such as Canada, where the working class sells its capacity to work (wages, benefits, pensions) to those who own and control the economy, the struggle over the price of the capacity to work and working conditions is constant. The employer holds the power to hire and fire workers. If individual workers, without any collective defence organization, do not agree with the price offered for the sale of their capacity to work, they have little power other than to refuse to work for the employer. Organized collectively, workers who do not agree with the price of their capacity to work and conditions of their employment have the power to withdraw their working capacity until an acceptable arrangement is found.
The prevailing relations of production where the working class
is compelled to sell its capacity to work to those who own and
control
the economy and the produced social value puts workers in a
defensive
position. Defending their claims on the social value they
produce
against those who own and
control it and the material means of producing social wealth
compels
the working class to organize and wage collective struggles.
This
defensive struggle remains constant as long as the ownership and
control of the material means of production are not in the hands
of the
actual producers, the
working class.
The alternative is socialized ownership and control of the material
means of production and the social value produced by the actual
producers, the working class. With control workers would be able to
decide collectively how that social wealth should be distributed for the
betterment of themselves, the economy, the peoples of the country and
the world, and Mother Earth.
Ownership and control of the economy is reflected in control of
the state machinery. Control of the state machinery, including
government, its agencies and police and military forces, allows the
owners of the economy to maintain their dictate over the means of
production and the distribution of the social value. Much of the wealth
produced by the workers is funnelled to these private interests and used
for their protection and maintenance as the ruling class. This is
evident in government budgets geared to war and increasing repression,
not social programs.
Control of the state machinery, including governments and their agencies, allows the private owners of the economy to maintain the working class as a dominated class. Workers who do not control the socialized economy are forced to sell their capacity to work as their main means to acquire a living and claim a certain amount of the social value they produce.
The class struggle over the price of the capacity to work and working conditions creates constant disruption because the working class, to defend itself and force employers to negotiate terms of employment, must withhold its capacity to work from time to time. The disruption to the economy through strikes and lockouts is real and meaningful as it should be if the struggle of the working class is to have the desired impact to force an employer to negotiate terms of employment that come near to what the working class has decided they can accept for the time being.
Employers of workers in those sectors of the economy that
directly affect the whole, such as dock, rail and postal workers use the
disruption of the economy that occurs as a weapon to blame the workers
and to refuse to negotiate. They use the state through the power of
government to force workers back to work on threat of severe punishment.
This allows the owners to dictate and not negotiate an agreement that
is satisfactory to the workers.
For those in control of Canada Post the modus operandi has
become to refuse to negotiate with postal workers and then lock
them
out or force workers to strike. In all these struggles, the
employers
seek to generate a crisis atmosphere throughout the country and
use
control of the mass media to
turn public opinion against workers to create conditions for
government
intervention to negate the struggle and force binding
arbitration. These actions mean continued public support for the postal workers, and all those on strike is critical.
How does the situation pose itself? The state is customarily organizing interference in the struggles of the working class who seek to reach an agreement with their employers on the price of the capacity to work and working conditions. This state-organized interference cannot go unchallenged, as it has become a customary aspect of working class struggles. The working class cannot accept such anti-people, unjust undemocratic dictates of the ruling imperialist elite using the power of their state machine.
The ruling elite, their state machine and companies must be told to come to their senses and negotiate with the working class to find working arrangements that workers can accept. Arbitrary dictate using the state machine to threaten punishment for defending workers' rights is unacceptable in the modern world where democracy, social justice and equilibrium are what the people demand. The working class has the right to decide for itself if the terms of employment are acceptable or not, and to use the power of withholding their capacity to work as a means to reach an arrangement with employers. State interference on behalf of employers cannot be tolerated within the present division of society where one social class owns and controls the means of production and the vast majority of people are forced to sell their capacity to work in order to live.
The ruling class has made it clear in its actions and words in the media, which it controls, that it wants to privatize most of Canada Post and turn workers throughout the communications and delivery sector into part-time gig workers to negate their rights with little chance of a collective defence to negotiate their terms of employment. This would allow those who own and control the economy to expropriate even greater amounts of the social value workers produce and drive down the general standard of living of Canadians.
The situation calls on Canadians to stand as one with CUPW workers and support their strike struggle to reach an agreement with Canada Post that satisfies their demands in the current period. Canadians must make it clear that they are one with postal workers in demanding a just settlement to this dispute.
The interference of the state on behalf of big employers must stop! The working class cannot accept any violation of its rights. Government orders to end strikes without a negotiated settlement agreeable to workers are unjust and undemocratic and are rightly being opposed. The working class has the fundamental right to say No! to the state's violation of the right of workers to withhold their capacity to work to force a settlement of their claims on the value they produce and for working conditions agreeable to themselves.
Stand firm in defence of workers' rights against any unjust government demand for postal workers to return to work without a negotiated settlement agreeable to the majority of workers. Stand with postal workers! Their struggle is our struggle!
Picket
organized by International Longshore and
Warehouse
Union pensioners in support of striking postal workers, December 5, 2024.
(To access articles individually click on the black headline.)
Website: www.cpcml.ca • Email: editor@cpcml.ca