Organizing Postal Workers in Defence of RightsRoland Schmidt is the President, Edmonton Local, Canadian Union of Postal Workers Our situation is very similar to other important sectors like health care in that leadership from the government or agencies has been lacking. They were not quick to institute the safety precautions necessary, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, and very slow to make a commitment that "Here is the protocol we need to have in place, here is the PPE that needs to be provided."
We submitted the list in mid-April I think, and we said "you have until May to comply." In our collective agreement we have the right to refuse unsafe work, which is a little bit more robust than the Canada Labour Code. So we said, "We need these things implemented by x date or our members have told us that they are willing to do mass refusals of unsafe work." That is what it took to get the company finally moving on it, and then very quickly, despite their dithering for almost a month, after we made that demand and expressed our willingness to back it up, then all of a sudden all these changes happened over the course of a weekend. With the start of the new week we had everything that we had asked for. That is the general experience -- government and the bosses are always trying to find ways that they can help out their business pals, and if they can either cow workers or drag their feet to not take more robust measures, they will do that. There is absolutely a "bark vs. bite" scenario when it comes to enforcement. All the organizing work we had done in the year previous to the pandemic is what paid dividends when the pandemic hit. So it ties into the broader consideration of how we empower worker organizations.
So when the pandemic hit, we already had this experience and training and this confidence, which gave us the leverage to go to Canada Post and say, "We have already had these confrontations with you over things of considerably less importance. We are in a pandemic. Here are our demands. This is what we are willing to do." And they knew we were serious about it. It is the work we had done prior to the pandemic that was decisive. Canada Post complied with all our demands. While we cannot say with certainty what would have happened without the measures we proposed, we do know that while we did have individual cases of COVID-19 amongst our members, we have had no spread within the plant or any of the depots. The pandemic has presented a challenge for us to do better to unlock the potential that is at the heart of the labour movement, For example, the pandemic has really shown the need for paid sick time for all workers, and we need the labour movement to have more strength to force this issue, to be able to mobilize to win these provisions during these very exceptional times. As a former president told me, "Always trust the membership." (Photos: WF, CUPW)
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Our
experience in Edmonton was that as soon as the pandemic was announced,
our local office was of course discussing with Canada Post that "This
is serious and what are you planning to do immediately?" There was no
shortage of acknowledgments from them of how serious this was, and that
they were committed to doing something. But
any time we made a specific proposal -- for example, we wanted to
change start times and create various shifts so that we could thin out
the number of people in the workplace at once, they would say, "Okay,
we don't know how we feel about that. We will have to review it and get
back to you." And then two weeks later they were still
reviewing, and this was a crisis. We needed specific action. It
got to the point where we had a whole list of protocols we wanted
implemented: staggered start times, creating additional shifts,
coaching on physical distancing, sanitation kits set up so that every
person would have their own kit to use to clean their work station and
then
dispose of the materials used to clean it, and what PPE we needed,
including gloves and face masks.
Militancy
or the ability to organize isn't a light switch, you really have to
build up your capacity to be effective, and our Local was very
deliberate. We had a brand new executive, and we were very open that
grievance-first unionism isn't working, that approach is very
individualist-based, and it leaves our membership in the dark. We were
very aggressive in having workfloor visits and saying, "The union is
only strong if the members are involved." So we said, "Here is an
activist training course," and we tried to get at least 10 per cent of
the workers from each facility to take the course. Through the course
we built up that network of activists who knew how to directly confront
management over issues, whether it was safety issues that popped up
before the pandemic, bully bosses, or what have you.