BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at raymond@barrietoday.com or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication).
I fully believe the company I work for is trying to sabotage itself.
Instead of capitalizing on the e-commerce boom and the huge market for flyers created by the massive decline in local newspapers, they have been crying broke due to “greedy union workers” trying to make a living wage, and sending all the business elsewhere by creating uncertainty and leaving workers without a contract for 18 months.
What is the sticking point in negotiations? They want to take away any incentive for letter carriers and rural and suburban mail carriers to go above and beyond and be more efficient. They sell it like we are lazy.
My friends, I have worked for Canada Post for over 20 years. Very few people make it past the first month. It takes a special breed to do this job. We work our asses off, and we get rewarded by getting paid for our work and going home when we are done. This is decided by a very complex measurement system that has been agreed upon by Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and has been mutually beneficial.
Canada Post says they need to punish the workers that are efficient. I honestly believe this is just a further tactic to destroy our postal service. The CEO of Canada Post sits on Purolator’s board of directors and has been happily sending all our business there for the past year, and milking Canadians for higher delivery fees while he is at it.
There is a lot going on in the world. We are in a trade war with our biggest trading partner. War is escalating in the Middle East. There are a million things happening that put Canada Post at the bottom of the average Canadian’s priority list.
But Canada Post belongs to us. It is important we don’t allow the government to quietly defund and ruin a public service and a potentially profitable service. In the end, we will all pay more if we allow that to happen, and rural parts of our country will be completely cut off from service.
My name is Daniel Greer. I have been a letter carrier for 21 years. I work hard and am proud of what I do. I am also currently the president of the Orillia Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
We will be voting “no” to this disgusting offer the Liberal government is forcing us to vote on, and we are counting on Canadians to let their MPs know that they support a public post office.
We own Canada Post and any CEO trying to dismantle and destroy our Crown corporation should be fired. The Liberal government needs to quit pretending they are a middleman between workers and Canada Post and own up to the fact they were elected to hire people to run this company in the best interest of Canadians and the working class, not to destroy it and pave the way for privatization.
Canada Post is continuing to lose business as we now wait to be told the process of this contract vote. When that is finally over, we could still be without a contract. This labour dispute needs a clear end.
Daniel Greer
Lindsay
.png;w=120;h=80;mode=crop)
