Canada Post Invests Heavily, Sells Profitable Assets, Then Cries Deficit

Two weeks into their strike, Canada Post workers continue to sound alarm bells over mismanagement and outsourcing. In January of this year, the Crown corporation sold off its IT and logistics departments as a means of restructuring, citing losses. 

Speaking to The North Star, Anju Parmar, President of CUPW Vancouver Local 846, said that the 750-person workforce was “not fired, but basically a whole portion [of the corporation] was given to another company.”

These latest transactions are only a continuation of the postal service's plan to sell off as much of itself as possible, including profitable sections. Since the 1980s, Canada Post has shut down roughly 1,700 rural post offices. During tense contract negotiations in 2016, the corporation further threatened to potentially eliminate all public post offices in the country.

CUPW, representing 55,000 postal workers, is trying to make their demands heard over calls to drastically restructure the company. The union is also pushing through their "Delivering Community Power" campaign to deliver new services that would help the courier adapt to the changing market.

Management stated earlier this year that there is a $76 million deficit. Those numbers come after selling off their assets, including their profitable logistics department.

Parmar states, “Sabotaging is where [management] is showing the losses, and also at the same time introducing and trying to execute the planning without consulting with us.”

News reporting on the company's earnings rarely mentions that Canada Post is in the middle of its five-year plan (2021–2025) to “transform the business.” CEO Doug Ettinger announced the plan in the 2022 Annual Report by CEO Doug Ettinger. The plan is projected to cost $4 billion. The plan also allocates approximately $800 million per year to new trucks, scanners, and IT.

Last year, Canada Post opened its new Albert Jackson Processing Plant in Scarborough, Ontario, which cost $470 million to build. It is a massive 585,000-square-foot building, the equivalent of 20 Canadian football fields. At full capacity, it could process 60,000 packages an hour. It is also the country's first “zero-carbon” designated building.

While the new plant is certainly an achievement, it is also enormously cost for a service that is constantly said to be on the brink of failure. Canada Post stated that without additional borrowing, it will “fall below required operating and reserve cash requirements by early 2025.”

“Every time we go into a negotiation, somehow Canada Post are crying that they are in a loss, but they still go through bonuses. They still give bonuses to their 22 vice presidents and CEO and everybody,” says Parmar, who has been a postal worker for over 32 years. “It's deliberate ... it's planned very well to fail the postal system.”

While executives were only paid out of the Corporate Team Incentive bonus program (CTI) once back in 2008–2009, executives, supervisors and office employees receive an undisclosed amount each year from their own bonus program. The union is demanding that those numbers be made public.

The postal service could minimize losses by allowing greater worker control. “There's no worker side management,” states Parmar. “That is sabotaging, basically wasting money where it's not needed. We are the workers. We know how everything works.”