"We do this so that we can continue to provide the service." Alain
Robitaille is the President of the Montreal
Local of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. The situation is changing fairly quickly. What we are trying to do is reduce the risks of contagion at the source. They will never be reduced to zero, we are aware of this, but we all have a role to play in reducing the risk of contagion as much as possible so that our workers stay at work because society has to keep going. They must stay at work under conditions that are as appropriate as possible in the circumstances we are experiencing at the moment.
We have a multitude of heroes on our work floors who are at work and are facing this crisis. It must be emphasized that they are heroes because they are holding the fort despite the imminent risks. We understand that at the end of the day the post office will become more and more important in the future because if people have to stay at home it is certain that there will be an expansion in the volume of parcels. People will order the products they need online. We will become more and more essential. If the mail can no longer be delivered, it is hard to see why a grocery worker would want to go to work, why the city worker would go to the sewage plant, why the worker who collects the garbage would go to work. We are together in facing the situation and we all have a role to play. We are satisfied that, following our negotiations with the employer, given that the strongest risk is still that of being infected by someone who returns from a trip and infects people who have not traveled, the employer is contacting all the workers who are scheduled to return from vacation. The employer is telling those who have returned from trips abroad, including the United States, that it is mandatory that they are required to go into mandatory quarantine, paid, for 14 days. If a worker has symptoms on the work floor they will also be required to go into quarantine for 14 days, paid. Workers are not required to go to their doctor. For people who need to stay home to look after their children, we have a provision in our collective agreement which provides for special leaves with 100 per cent of regular wages, and this does not affect other leaves or vacations. Senior management has authorized supervisors to approve five-day periods of special leave. The frequency of cleaning of the postal stations, of common areas, has been increased. In the mechanized plants, there is one person per shift whose only job is to disinfect the common areas, so three people per day who do just that. In the Montreal local, the approach we are taking is to do everything in our power so that people can stay at work. We inform them of their rights, including the right that is very fundamental at the moment, the right to refuse, the right to refuse a job that puts you at risk. This right encourages workers to deal with their problems and to try to resolve them. Faced with a worker exercising their right of refusal, the Canada Labour Code is clear that there must be an investigation, that another worker cannot be assigned to do that work until the investigation takes place and a remedy is applied to the situation or the investigation concludes that the complaint was unfounded. The right of refusal will allow us, I think, to work in a workplace that is as healthy as possible. We know that there are going to be several management issues, many packages piling up on the floors, and we know that the stock will have to go out. We know what employers normally do in these circumstances, when, as they put it, there is money sleeping on the floor, when there is a little panic. They force workers to work harder, to work side-by-side, to work in the same truck. In this situation the right to refuse unsafe work takes on even more importance. We inform workers of their rights, paid quarantine, special leave, the right to refuse, the right to disability insurance if illness puts you at risk in the future of contracting and dying from coronavirus. We do this so that we can continue to provide
the service. This is not just a question of
union solidarity but of societal solidarity. (Photo: CUPW)
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We
have negotiated with the employer that we no
longer have direct contact with the client. Our
letter carriers ring the doorbell. If there is a
signature required, we forget the signature, we
give the shipment directly to the customer. If
the customer is not there, we try to drop the
package in a safe place. As a last resort only,
we send this to the postal counters and we leave
a card for people to go to the postal counters.
We do not want to divert the problem to the
people who work at the counters because they are
also at risk.