PrintUNA members urged to join Posties' info picket to demand Canada Post negotiate
United Nurses of Alberta members are encouraged to join an information picket on Thursday, June 30, 2016 by members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, who face a lockout by Canada Post Corp.
The information picket is scheduled to take place at 2 p.m. at the postal depot located at 12135 – 149 Street, Edmonton, three blocks south of Yellowhead Trail in the city’s northwest. (Click here to view a Google Map)
CUPW needs our support to tell Canada Post to negotiate with its employees instead of locking them out of their jobs, and that Canadians want expanded postal services with fair prices, not less service and higher prices.
Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra has officially rejected a letter from postal workers asking him to extend the July 2 deadline for a lockout by a period of two weeks, which could mean that the profitable company is indeed preparing to lock out its workforce in the middle of a public postal review, spoiling the process.
“We only got their first real ‘offer’ last Saturday and it still contained a raft of cuts to our working standards that they know we could never accept,” said Mike Palecek, CUPW’s national president.
Canada Post’s haste to push matters to a head in the bargaining process while insisting on hefty cuts has had CUPW crying foul from the start of negotiations. “Canada Post managers started this countdown to a labour dispute by filing for conciliation shockingly early on in the negotiations process,” he said.
“They don’t really want to give us a chance to settle a deal. They want us out and they want the public to blame the postal workers for management’s decisions,” he stated.
In a letter handed out to postal workers late last night, one of Chopra’s human resources executives claimed that agreeing to the union’s request to extend talks would only delay matters and produce further “uncertainty” for its customers.
“So they’re going to kill the mail and remove all uncertainty, I guess” said Palecek.
The profitable Crown corporation, which netted almost $100 million last year, its 20th profitable year, is trying to cut back workers’ pensions and remove job security protections, among other cuts. It is refusing to listen to union proposals for the expansion of services and pay equity for rural and suburban mail carriers, 70 per cent of whom are women.
