Political patronage and abusive sanctions undermine Canada Post

Now in their 20th day on strike, the postal workers are still holding out. At the Chabanel office, the second largest in the country, “People are really determined, confident, and still smiling,” says shop steward Guillaume Brodeur. He and his colleague Hugo Charette denounce the cronyism at Canada Post and the repression of workers, both before and during the strike.

“We're not just fighting for money. We're fighting for respect,” Brodeur tells The North Star. “We've felt humiliated for several years, so that's why people are emotional. They want to fight.” Mr. Charette adds, “Canada Post has stretched the elastic to the limit, and people are fed up.”

Repression of the strike by the Crown corporation isn't helping matters. It has already laid off hundreds of workers across the country, and cut group insurance for its employees. Cases of workers with incurable illnesses losing their insurance are piling up.

But this repression began before the work stoppage. Mr. Brodeur explains that Canada Post has “gone mad on health and safety” instead of concentrating on improving service, particularly parcel delivery.

“Economic Violence”

“All they do is zip up our coats to the last notch,” he says. But at the same time, “they harass and intimidate injured workers. They give disciplinary suspensions of one, three, five days for minor reasons. It's as if Canada Post has fallen back into its old tradition of repression that existed 20–30 years ago.”

He gives the example of a five-day suspension for a door left open too long, or for forgetting to put on one's handbrake. “For us, this is economic violence.”

In addition, Mr. Charette adds that the state-owned company is currently installing GPS trackers on its fleet of vehicles, which collect all kinds of information on workers. “They'd like to give themselves the right to discipline solely on the basis of data collected via telematics.”

Mr. Brodeur remarks: “They're installing spies in our vehicles. Let's just say there's not an abundance of trust.”

He adds, “We've neglected our big commercial parcels. There are companies right next door to our post office that can't get service. We're the cheapest on the market and we're systematically losing share! Right now, we're down to 30% of the parcel market, but we had 70% a few years ago.”

They feel betrayed by senior management,” he says. “Because, jeez, they're incompetent. I call them the unaccountables.”

Nepotism and political appointments

“Historically, Canada Post is all about political appointments,” explains Guillaume Brodeur. “You have a Conservative clique in management, but you also have a Liberal clique.”

He continues: “Even a long time ago, when the Liberal government was overthrown and the Conservatives came back to power, the next day, the person who ran the post office in the village lost it. It was a friend of the party who had it. It's always worked that way. This is perhaps more subtle.”

“It's clan wars, and the top managers bring in their children. They put them in management positions. The governance structure is rotten. As a result, we don't necessarily have the most qualified people in management positions. Even so, by 2023, everyone has had their executive bonus in one of the worst financial years,” he complains.

According to both factors, workers try to improve the situation in negotiation after negotiation, despite this incompetence on the part of management. “At every negotiation, we bring a demand from our labour account, but we also bring solutions for the postal service,” says Hugo Charette.

“It's important,” says Brodeur. “In countries where there is no public postal service, it costs a fortune just to send a letter. I've seen this in Colombia, for example. Because of the civil war, they don't have a public postal service. It costs them the equivalent of $20 just to send a letter to the capital. We don't want that for Canada.”

“I know that mail is in the air right now. But that doesn't mean we don't need this sprawling service that goes everywhere. We just need to enhance it, because we can multiply the usefulness of the post offices that are present in every village in the country, in every native reserve.”

For Hugo, one of the ways to change the situation “is perhaps to review how the Board of Directors of Canada Post is appointed. There could be worker representation! I reiterate that we're at a crossroads. We're fighting to keep our postal service public.”

He concludes: “As workers, we're coming up with solutions to ensure the survival of the postal service, with a vision of restoring it to a public service that has been lost, as far as I'm concerned, over time. That's really what drives me most in this struggle.”