Lorne Gunter Gets the Postal Strike Right!

[Editor: The article below is quoted as an educational service to inform Canadian readers that it may be time for a change in Canada as well. Who deserves $24/ hour or even $18 / hour to deliver mail which requires no training beyond high school? Then 4 days before the strike, I sent an XpressPost which is supposed to be delivered the next day and cost me about $10. It has not arrived yet! The Post Office says their investigation" will be completed by June 28! I mailed it almost a month ago!]

Why I have NO sympathy for the Postal Strike nor CUPW. Lorne Gunter sums it up quite rightly in the National Post.

• DHL owned by German Post Office
• Largest logistics company in the world
• Makes a big profit
• Privatized former state-owned post office
• Germany gets their mail 6 days per week as does the U.S.
• Most of what I get in my mailbox is junk mail that companies paid the post office to include in mail
• However they did not pay me to read or sort it at $18 or $24 per hour, so I am on strike
• I refuse to take home any junk mail from my mailbox
• I will "mail" it back by putting it in the letter drop from now on

The article below has it right.

One quote:

"Deutsche Post DHL now even delivers residential mail in Britain and the Dutch postal service is an aggressive competitor for first-class mail in a number of other countries. The result is better, faster service at rates surprisingly similar to those charged by former state monopolies, even in sparcely populated rural areas."

"Lorne Gunter: Canada Post-CUPW fighting over a sinking ship

Postmedia

Members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers walk the picket line in Fredericton, N.B. on Monday as part of the union's rotating strikes.

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Lorne Gunter  Jun 14, 2011 – 12:53 PM ET | Last Updated: Jun 14, 2011 1:16 PM ET

Have you ever used the courier DHL? You might know it by its distinctive yellow trucks with big red lettering. It’s owned by the German post office, Deutsche Post. Since privatization in 1995, Deutsche Post DHL has grown to become the world’s largest logistics company with 2010 revenues of nearly $100 billion. It’s bigger than UPS or Fedex — almost twice the size of UPS and three times that of Fedex. And, to repeat myself, it is a privatized, former state-owned post office.

So when during the current post strike here in Canada you hear representatives of Canada Post or the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) claim that Canada needs a public-monopoly postal service, feel free to cry “Poppycock!” (Rural MPs and some business owners often make the same claim. You can call “B.S.” on them, too.)

Deutsche Post delivers mail six days a week in Germany with a far better on-time delivery rate than Canada Post.

We need a Crown corporation delivering our mail the same way we need government-owned telephone services or public buggy whip makers.

Since the beginning of the month, CUPW has been conducting one- or two-day rotating strikes around the country to try to force a new collective bargaining agreement on Canada Post. The union wants a stall on major upgrades in mail-sorting technology and the reversal of a Canada Post proposal to cut pay for new hires by one-third from $24 an hour to $18. In other words, the union wants a contract that freezes Canada Post’s operating practices in the glory days when most Canadians cared about the post office — an era long gone in the age of email, online banking and bill-paying, Internet shopping and private couriers.

I lived through one of the work stoppages here in Edmonton on June 7. Or at least I think I did. Who can tell? Postal service was already so uneven it’s hard to know what’s been delayed and what hasn’t. Moreover, most of what our letter carrier brings is junk mail anyway. Last year for five weeks I kept a log of all the “mail” delivered to our home. Out of 167 pieces of mail we received, just six pieces were letters, seven bills, four cheques, one invitation and one investment statement. That’s just 19 pieces of first-class mail in a month, or 11%; less than one piece per delivery day. Canada Post has become a glorified ad-mail service.

So why, I wondered, is CUPW conducting work stoppages no one is noticing? (Businessess might be noticing slightly erratic delivery of their invoices and payments to and from customers, but nothing earth-shattering.) Why hasn’t the union shut down the postal service all at once, nationwide? Indeed, it is accusing Canada Post of trying to provoke a national strike so the corporation can ask the federal government for back-to-work legislation.

Then it occurred to me, CUPW probably opposes a nationwide strike because such an action would a) prove the general uselessness of maintaining a public postal monopoly in this day and age, and b) prompt calls for privatization, neither of which the union wants. So it is left with meaningless, invisible local walkouts that it hopes will pressure Canada Post to grant its members a better deal while at the same time not provoking the public into demands for a private postal service.

For its part, Canada Post is happy to go along with this charade, because it, too, wants to avoid privatization. Essentially, to borrow an old phrase, Canada Post and its 50,000 union employees are fighting over who gets to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

There is no longer any justification for public postal monopolies. In most European countries, service has been privatized and monopolies over first-class mail have been eliminated. Deutsche Post DHL now even delivers residential mail in Britain and the Dutch postal service is an aggressive competitor for first-class mail in a number of other countries. The result is better, faster service at rates surprisingly similar to those charged by former state monopolies, even in sparcely populated rural areas.

Canada Post claims it’s revenues are off $65 million since the walkouts began. That seems high, but what it and the union must understand is that every dollar lost due to the strike is unlikely to come back once a new contract is in place. The postal service still exists only because some of its customers (mostly technophobic seniors and small businesses) refuse to learn how to use online billing and payment. If the strike forces those customers to figure out a more modern method of conducting business, those these postal-reliant Canadians will soon find they, like the rest of us,
no longer need Canada Post or its workers.

Canadians — even those in far-flung communities — should not fear privatization nor listen to the spin being spewed by both the union and Canada Post about the continued need to preserve their cozy horse-and-buggy industry.

National Post

Follow Lorne on Twitter @lornegunter"

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