Canada Post workers across the country drew a line in the sand late Thursday night Pacific time, as they all walked off the job after their 72-hour strike notice expired.
Mandi Poss, president of Local 760 Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) in Kelowna said they actually heard the strike was going to happen around an hour and a half before the 9 p.m. deadline passed. As soon as the clock struck 9 p.m. (or 12 a.m. Eastern), employees walked off the job.
On Friday morning, the employees in Kelowna were in front of the 24-hour facility located at 750 Baillie Avenue.
“We are fighting for our pensions, for our healthcare, obviously our wages, we all know inflation has gone crazy,” said Poss. “We’re fighting for our new hires. Right now Canada Post is attacking all the new hires, taking away their pensions, wanting them to go to RSP programs.”
And Poss added that Canada Post hasn’t been losing money.
“Everything you see of [Canada Post] losing money, they’re not losing money,” said Poss. “They are developing infrastructure, they just built a $700 million plant in Toronto… Victoria’s gone [to] e-vehicles.”
Albert Jackson Processing Centre located in Scarborough, Ontario is a $470 million facility that is roughly the size of six Canadian football fields.
According to Poss, dating back to 2018, Canada Post began a $5 billion infrastructure investment plan.
“They’re investing in it, they’re not willing to invest in their workers,” said Poss. “We have gotten nothing.”
In 2020, the CUPW came to a two-year agreement with Canada Post to keep working during the pandemic.
“We made this deal with them and now we come to contracts and it basically got flipped around on us,” said Poss. “They decided they want to make it worse… they’re taking away money from our simple things like physio. This is a hard job, this wares on your body and we do everything for our job, and we do everything so we can retire and they’re making it so we can’t retire, we can’t retire with dignity, we can’t work with dignity so we’re fighting for that and we’re fighting for the public to keep their service. This is your service.”
On Friday morning, the employees received support from the community, as most people who drove past honked in support.
“It’s been very good support around here,” said Poss.
The strike doesn’t come at the best time either with the holiday season right around the corner as Canada Post is something that most of the public and small businesses rely on.
“We want to work, but we need a contract, we need our healthcare, we need our pension, we need to survive, we’re here for survival, we can’t pay our mortgages,” said Poss, who added Canada Post offered a raise of 1.5-2 per cent rise. Poss added that it doesn’t come close to help in regards to inflation.
As the strike goes on, all mail including parcels will not be delivered and some post offices will be closed.
– with files from Canadian Press
