‘Our struggle continues’: Rotating postal worker strikes land in London, Ont. Tuesday

Rotating Canada Post worker strikes landed in London on Tuesday. CTV’s Gerry Dewan explains why.

London and Coburg were the two Ontario locations where Canada Post workers were off the job Monday.

Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) leadership haven’t said how long the stoppage will last, and the union is also refusing to deliver flyers in many areas across the province.

Mark Platt is the CUPW national director for the Ontario region, and he spoke to members on the picket line, stressing that Canada needs a strong national postal service and can’t rely on the private sector.

“Amazon isn’t going to go to those small places. Canada Post has been going, will be going, and we’ll always be going to those places. And we need to get this contract settled, so we can go after those customers and serve them like we were,” he said.

Platt said that discussions are underway this week that could result in resumed negotiations.

Platt told CTV News the corporation wants to use part-time workers exclusively on weekends which the union opposes. They’re looking for protections for full-time employees.

“Canada Post has put out a narrative that we’re against weekend delivery. The union is absolutely for weekend delivery. And all through negotiations in last year, we support weekend delivery. We’re trying to make the positions on weekends, some of them, full-time. They want to have only exclusive part-time, 15-an-hour-a-week jobs on the weekend,” he said.

Platt also refutes the narrative that the union hasn’t been willing to support the shift away from letter delivery.

“Parcel revenues have outstripped letter mail revenues after 2016. The union’s been part of that change. And we’ve been working through that change with our letter carriers and our plants for almost 10 years now,” he said. “So, it’s a false narrative that we don’t get where letter mail is going.”

Leaders with CUPW Local 566, which represents more than 800 London-area workers, said members remain determined to get a contract with job protections.

“Our struggle continues. We’ve been fighting for a fair collective agreement for the last two years,” said Local 566 Vice President Sibu Joseph.

The Retail Council of Canada has issued a statement indicating that the rotating strikes and intermittent flyer delivery create a volatility their members are finding difficult to navigate.

Joseph said the goal is to get Canada Post to the table with limited impacted on customers.

“We want the post office to run smoothly. We don’t want to disturb the mail operations fully,” he said.

Analysts say Canada Post has lost more than $4 billion since 2018 and received a $1 billion cash injection from the federal government earlier this year to keep it afloat. The government has signaled that a significant restructuring is needed that may include an end to door-to-door mail delivery.