Canada Post Strike Over but....

Post items here [radio related or otherwise] that you have run across on the net that might be of interest to others

Canada Post Strike Over but....

Postby jon » Mon Jun 27, 2011 6:13 pm

Cool moods expected at Canada Post locations as legislation takes effect
By Bradley Bouzane, Postmedia News
June 27, 2011 4:02 PM

Thousands of Canadian postal workers are going back to their jobs this week and while they expect smooth delivery of mail to resume in the hot summer months, the union says the emotional climate at postal facilities across Canada will be anything but warm.

Nearly 50,000 workers are expected back on the job Monday night after back-to-work legislation, which passed without changes in the House of Commons Saturday after nearly 48 hours of debate, received royal assent in the Senate Sunday night.

George Floresco, a national vice-president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, said the level of animosity felt by most workers being forced back to work is likely to linger for a long time.

"Our members are going back . . . and they're angry, they're quite upset and that resentment is going to the workplace," Floresco said Monday. "They're angry at Canada Post and they're angry at the Harper government. The mail will get processed — we're not angry at the customers, that's for sure — but it's only going to carry on and there won't be any labour peace in the post office for years to come as a result of this."

Despite the feelings of dissatisfaction, Floresco said all workers are expected back at work and said it's unlikely there will be pockets of revolt against the legislation, which would come with harsh penalties.

"People, in some cases, will be staying on the picket line until the last minute," he said. "That's fine, but we don't expect anyone to be defying the legislation."

Canada Post spokeswoman Anick Losier said the Crown corporation isn't wearing rose-coloured glasses and is aware there will be some tension as workers returns to their positions.

She said Canada Post is hopeful the unionized workers can continue working hard to fight a possibly uphill fight to remain current in an increasingly electronic age.

"We have lived through a very difficult time at Canada Post the last few weeks and months," Losier said. "It's not going to be easy (at first) and I think to suggest everything is going to be hunky dory would not be appropriate.

"Our employees are hard workers, they love what they do and they love to serve their customers and I think if we can all do it in a way to go toward our end goal, we'll be able to turn the page and start thinking about the future of this company . . . and how to keep ourselves relevant in a digital era."

Losier said Canadians can expect to see some mail begin to trickle into their mailboxes by Tuesday morning, but it will be "some time" before mail service is fully restored.

"It's going to take some time for us to stabilize our system, Losier said. "As you can imagine, we have some backlogs."

She said Canada Post realizes it will take time to heal the wounds caused by the labour disruption, but said efforts to remain transparent and encourage communication between managers and staff will be made to ease the transition as quickly as possible.

Bill C-6 passed in the House of Commons Saturday night and postal workers were expected back on the job 24 hours after the bill became law.

The union said workers would cease walking the picket lines by 8:30 p.m. ET on Monday.

Canada Post locked out its employees on June 14, after CUPW staged 12 days of rotating strikes, which affected many major centres, including Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg.

Less than one week after the lockout began, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt introduced the back-to-work legislation.

The federal government now has to appoint an arbitrator to move the process forward by deciding on a binding contract for the unionized workers.

Until then, workers resume their duties under the conditions included in their now-expired contract.

Floresco said he expects to see more of the same in terms of labour relations from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's majority government, but said CUPW will help other unions if they get involved in similar disputes.

"This legislation is probably the first step the Harper government is going to be taking in attacking unions and workers, and we'll probably see a lot more of this coming down the road," Floresco said. "We're going to be working with our allies and other unions to mount support for whoever is taking on the government . . . and working together."

bbouzane(at)postmedia.com
Twitter.com/bouzane
ref. - http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business ... story.html
User avatar
jon
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 9257
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:15 am
Location: Edmonton

Re: Canada Post Strike Over but....

Postby jon » Tue Jun 28, 2011 9:24 am

When mail delivery resumes, will anyone notice?
Post office and union need to work together if they hope to survive
By Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal
June 28, 2011 6:37 AM

Today, all things being equal, the mail will arrive.

How many of us will notice?

Oh sure, I'll be happy to get my Economist and my New Yorker. I haven't "migrated" my life to an iPad, and I'm old-fashioned enough that I still like to hold a glossy magazine in my hands while I eat my porridge or take my bath.

But long gone all the days when I waited by my mailbox for letters from friends and relatives, or even bills and official notices.

These days, even my 88-year-old Auntie Sarah writes to me via e-mail. My Uncle Hal, 82, just "friended" me on Facebook. Seniors are ranked among the fastest growing Facebooking demographic. Indeed, thanks to Facebook and Twitter and e-mail, I'm more in touch with my extended family, my old university pals and my high school friends than ever before.

My regular bills? Mostly, I pay them by direct withdrawal. My paycheque comes to me via direct deposit. What still comes in the mail? A notice from my vet that my dog is due for a rabies shot. A notice from my dentist that I'm due for a cleaning. A notice from a spa we visited once three years ago that they're having a sale on pedicures. Bank statements and more bank statements.

Some it is useful. Much of it I could live with out. And most of it could likely be delivered just as well electronically. And in a few years, when I do read my magazines on a waterproof, tub-friendly iPad, I'm not sure what will be in my mailbox.

As for all the packages I order online? All the rush parcels I need to send? Once Canada Post had a monopoly there, too. Today, private courier companies offer stiff competition, with convenient, reliable service.

I'm not delighted about this development. There is something humane and civilized about the personal hand delivery of mail to your door, something that connects you in time to the more leisurely eras of Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope, when the post didn't come just once a day, but several times.

But mail carriers don't just deliver the mail. They connect the community. A good mail carrier is like a neighbourhood guardian -making daily visits to your house, the first to notice if something has gone terribly wrong. We rely on postal workers as everything from unofficial block parents to gardening judges. The frigid winter that I was home with my new baby, the letter carrier was sometimes the only adult I saw all day -my human link to the outside world.

But with more and more people relying on electronic communications, the role of the mail carrier, as neighbourhood icon, is breaking down. Which is undoubtedly why this month's postal strike ended with a whimper, not a bang.

Once upon a time, a postal strike paralyzed the nation. The union had a powerful bargaining position, the ability to hold the country's economy and social network hostage.

This time, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers had no such leverage. But neither, of course, did Canada Post. There was little groundswell of public support for either the union or the corporation.

The Conservative government and the New Democrat opposition put on a grand parliamentary show over the past few days, fighting over backto-work legislation. For a democracy wonk like me, it was premium entertainment -a 24-hour three ring circus to watch on CPAC or follow on Twitter. (How awful a parent am I? I actually made my family watch part of the debate at the dinner table, where TV is usually banned.) But our household was, I'm guessing, one of the few to be paying attention. The debate was a lot of theatrical sound and fury about very little.

The Conservatives may have wanted to look tough to the public by legislating a dramatic end to the strike. But I doubt it earned them many opinion poll points -not because people were so sympathetic to the union, but because no one much cared if the strike lasted another week.

This was no national emergency. It was, at best, an inconvenience. Similarly, the NDP's impassioned defence of the rights of organized labour went largely unnoticed because no one was paying much attention to the strike in the first place. The New Democrats and the Conservative played to their core ideological supporters while most other Canadians simply tuned out. The true irony? The post office and the union need to be on the same page here.

If they have any hope of surviving as an industry, of keeping union jobs for the future, the last thing either side needs to be doing is reminding Canadians of how irrelevant they are. Like the newspaper industry, like the record industry, like every information industry, Canada Post needs to figure out if and how it can survive and reinvent itself for the digital era, before it ends up like Blockbuster or HMV, a business in search of a purpose, overtaken by technology and a social and cultural revolution.

ref. - http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business ... story.html
User avatar
jon
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 9257
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:15 am
Location: Edmonton

Re: Canada Post Strike Over but....

Postby J Kendrick » Tue Jun 28, 2011 10:39 am

How much one might notice the impact of the postal shutdown here in BC, one supposes, would depend on just how interested people might be in participating the mail-in HST vote... given that we're all still waiting to receive our ballots in the mail....
J Kendrick
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 619
Joined: Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:45 pm
Location: Vancouver, Canada

Re: Canada Post Strike Over but....

Postby Dan Sys » Tue Jun 28, 2011 1:03 pm

Does anyone know where Elections B.C. is getting the names & addresses from for the HST referendum? Hopefully they will not be using the Provincial voters list from the 2009 election as that thing was already grossly outdated back then. Several of my former co-workers at Canada Post told me that they estimate about 10% of the voters cards in 2009 delivered on their routes in East Vancouver ended up being returned to sender........and now we've had 2 more years of people moving around since then. I think it's time for a proper enumeration in B.C.
User avatar
Dan Sys
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 1887
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2006 7:05 pm
Location: Aldergroove, B.C.

Re: Canada Post Strike Over but....

Postby Russ_Byth » Tue Jun 28, 2011 4:44 pm

Dan Sys wrote:Does anyone know where Elections B.C. is getting the names & addresses from for the HST referendum? Hopefully they will not be using the Provincial voters list from the 2009 election as that thing was already grossly outdated back then.


This won't make you happy Dan, but it answers your question.
From Elections BC:

Who gets an HST Referendum Voting Package?
An HST Referendum Voting Package will be mailed to each registered voter beginning June 13 through to June 24, 2011.  If you do not receive a voting package, you are not registered or your voter information is not up-to-date, call Elections BC at 1-800-661-8683 (toll-free).  You may register and request a voting package before midnight (local time) on Friday, July 8, 2011.
User avatar
Russ_Byth
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 1298
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 9:08 pm
Location: West Kelowna

Re: Canada Post Strike Over but....

Postby Mike Cleaver » Tue Jun 28, 2011 9:29 pm

Glad to see Canada Post back at work.
In the mailbox today, three expired flyers and a bill I'd already paid.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
User avatar
Mike Cleaver
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 2085
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:56 pm
Location: Vancouver

Re: Canada Post Strike Over but....

Postby jon » Wed Jun 29, 2011 11:33 am

Yesterday's mail consisted of a single piece: a form letter addressed to me, informing me, in the future tense, that the name of furnace service company was going to change on June 1st. To become the same as 2-3 other furnace companies in Edmonton owned by the same manufacturer.

Today, it is one form letter addressed to me, from TELUS this time, telling me how cheap (small print: for the first six months) they can give me TV, landline and Internet.

So far, that is it.

As for Paula Simons' column on the importance of a mail carrier to a community, she seems to have forgotten that any part of town built in the last 25-30 years gets mail delivered to a box on the street. Neighbourhoods built in the last 15 years havethe mail delivered to the box by low cost contractors. When I checked in 2002, it was $27,000 for my local route that takes a full 8 hours to do, and that includes gas and the cost of running a vehicle. Not sure what it is now, as lowest bidder wins.

And then there is this:

Postal union to fight back-to-work legislation in court
By Teresa Smith, Postmedia News
June 29, 2011 8:38 AM
ref. - http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business ... story.html

OTTAWA — Letters and bills may returning to your mailbox, but the union representing Canada's postal workers says this fight is far from over.

The 15-member national executive board of CUPW has decided to take the federal government to court over last week's back-to-work legislation.

Nearly 50,000 locked-out Canada Post workers were forced back to their jobs this week under settlement terms arranged by government.

Gerry Deveau, national director for the Ontario region of the CUPW, says Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms contains the right to belong to a union and Canada's labour code protects the right to collective bargaining.

It's on those grounds, the union wants to file a legal challenge, he said.

"The government intervention here is stripping us of those rights," Deveau said.

He said the union will consult with legal counsel Wednesday and for the rest of this week. He said he anticipates launching the challenge by next week.

Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton said Wednesday morning he hadn't heard anything about the possible court case.

"We're focused on delivering the mail and serving Canadians," he said.

The court case will target one of the main sticking points over the bill — the wage settlements.

The government legislated a wage increase of 1.57 per cent, which is lower than the 1.9 per cent that Canada Post had put on the table earlier this month in negotiations with its workers.

"We want to challenge the government legislating us back to work at less than what the corporation offered at a time when the cost of living is far greater than what the government has imposed upon us," Deveau said.

Canada Post locked out its employees on June 14, after the Canadian Union of Postal Workers conducted 12 days of rotating strikes.

Labour Minister Lisa Raitt then introduced the back-to-work legislation.

Opposition MPs condemned the bill as a whole, saying it undermined workers' rights to collective bargaining.
User avatar
jon
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 9257
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:15 am
Location: Edmonton


Return to Rip 'N' Read ... aka Cut 'N' Paste

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 24 guests