Last week marked Canada Post Corporation's 17'th anniversary
as one of Canada's major Crown corporations. Contrary to previous
years, postal workers were offered no free coffee or cake.
Marking the anniversary however, was a demonstration on Sparks
Street of over 100 Ottawa postal workers, vigorously denouncing the
Liberal government's decision to instruct the Corporation to
immediately withdraw from the delivery of economy unaddressed
admail. This will result in the first mass layoffs (10,000 workers)
in Post Office history.
This latest Liberal decision was announced at a press conference
held by the Minister Responsible for Canada Post, Diane Marleau, on
October 8,1996 while releasing the report on the Canada Post
Mandate Review. The report also called upon the government to
"direct Canada Post Corporation to bring it's labor costs under
the collective agreement into line with the realities of the
contemporary Canadian workplace".
It is further recommended "that in the event of a failure of
the collective bargaining process to achieve the necessary
adjustments without service disruption, the government be prepared
to take appropriate action to protect the immediate public interest
and ensure the long-term financial soundness of a strategically
repositioned Canada Post Corporation".
The contract covering over 46,000 postal workers is set to
expire in June 1997. The CUPW leadership says they will fight any
government attempts to impose rollbacks.
When the Trudeau government went ahead with the conversion of the
Post Office Department into a Crown Corporation in 1981, one of the
main reasons invoked in the House of Commons to justify their
decision was to "settle once and for all the years of labor strife
at the post office".
Through various arrangements, Bill C-42 was drafted and the
mandate of Canada Post was defined. Andre Ouellet, who was
Postmaster General at the time, worked out of the offices of the
Canadian Labor Congress for a year to complete this task.
If there is one thing which is clear in these recent events
surrounding Canada Post, it is that the old tripartite arrangements
is no longer acceptable to the ruling capitalist class.
While the CEO of the corporation is proposing that workers
accept the notion of stakeholder and struggle to make their
corporation "more competitive in the global market", thus ensuring
maximum profit for the capitalist class, this has not quelled the
inter-monopoly capitalist dog fight for the appropriation of
capitalist profit.
The leadership of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers seems
to be stuck and unable to respond to the new situation. What will
the new arrangement be? It looks like workers will have to decide
very soon.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
