As Canada Post and the union representing its workers inch closer to another potential strike, a report by the commission charged with examining the Crown corporation’s finances has called for the end of door-to-door mail delivery to homes — one of the main reasons for the previous work stoppage in November.
But the report, authored by industrial inquiry commissioner William Kaplan, also says that daily delivery to businesses should be maintained.
The service cut would help the corporation’s overall bleak financial picture, the report notes, a situation it highlights in great detail.
“Canada Post is facing an existential crisis: It is effectively insolvent, or bankrupt,” Kaplan wrote. “Without thoughtful, measured, staged, but immediate changes, its fiscal situation will continue to deteriorate.”
The report also says that the mail service must be allowed to hire part-time employees to work weekends and potentially during the week, a major sticking point in negotiations so far because the Canadian Union of Postal workers (CUPW) said it would be akin to hiring gig workers.
Possibly to address this concern, the report advocates that any part-timers be paid the same as full-time employees and receive the same benefits.
“These jobs should not be [gig] jobs, but good jobs, attractive jobs, with employees who come under the umbrella of the applicable collective agreement with normative terms and conditions of employment,” Kaplan wrote.
The recommendations were based on the overall conclusion that Canada Post was worth saving as a “vital national institution,” the report said, and that these cuts and changes could preserve the Crown corporation.
Steven MacKinnon, then the federal labour minister, established the commission in December — the same time he sent the dispute between Canada Post and the union to the Canada Industrial Relations Board.
The commission had until yesterday to deliver its report to the minister, Canada Post and CUPW. It was made public today.
Canada Post president and CEO Doug Ettinger welcomed its recommendations.
“This report provides Canada Post, CUPW, our employees and all Canadians with a frank and straightforward assessment of the challenges we face,” Ettiger wrote in a statement. “And [we] will work with our bargaining agents and our shareholder, the Government of Canada, to address our challenges and secure a sustainable path forward.”
Patty Hajdu, the federal minister for jobs and families, and Secretary of State for Labour John Zerucelli met with members of the union and executives from Canada Post earlier on Friday. According to Hajdu’s office, the meetings with the two sides were separate and lasted from about 45 minutes to an hour.
The minister’s office said it urged both parties to think of the report as a stepping stone to resume negotiations.
The board ordered both sides back to work in December after the work stoppage led to the pileup of millions of packages around the holiday season.
That order extended the collective agreement to May 22, now less than a week away. That means mail service could stop again as a result of a strike or lockout as of that date.
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While the union and the postal service had been in talks since April 30, Canada Post said late Tuesday it was pausing negotiations after, it said, days of trying to hash out a deal had gone by “without meaningful progress.”
The postal service said the pause would allow it to return with “comprehensive proposals” that it hopes can move discussions forward, while the union called the break in negotiation a “tactic.”
“Given the seriousness of the matter, it is reprehensible to keep workers and the public on edge,” the union said in a statement. “We should all be focused on negotiating good collective agreements that will benefit workers and grow our public service to meet the needs of all Canadians.”
Small businesses prepare
That leaves small businesses and shipping firms bracing for a possible strike, a disruption they warn could strain supply chains and freeze millions of packages as well as billions of dollars in sales.
Mom-and-pop shops and e-commerce companies have started making alternative arrangements to get their packages to consumers and clients. But many are already frustrated.
In Cape Breton, N.S., yarn retailer Tracy Stubbard says she’s begun tallying the hit to her bottom line if she’s forced to ship through a large courier, which typically charges more for parcels than Canada Post.
“People that just wanted one skein of yarn, I would ask them to wait to see what happened with Canada Post,” said Stubbard, who owns the store-on-wheels operation.
The cost of small shipments outweighed sales during last year’s work stoppage, which shut down postal operations for more than a month during the peak shipping season ahead of the winter holidays.
For those in rural areas, where Canada Post is usually the most accessible option, there’s also the inconvenience of finding an alternative courier.
“I shipped through Purolator, because it was the closest and easiest spot for me to get to — which was still a 20-minute drive. But their office can only hold maybe two or three people. So we were lined up outside in the cold for 45 minutes to get in to ship stuff,” Stubbard said.
Small businesses bore the brunt of the service stoppage in the fall, with many scrambling last-minute to find other carriers who could deliver their packages.
While a burgeoning crop of last-mile carriers and shipping platforms saw their volumes surge during last year’s month-long postal strike, many were caught off guard and found they could handle only a fraction of the demand.
Jarrett Stewart, in charge of commercial operations at delivery startup GoBolt, says a Canada Post work stoppage would mean more customers but also more headaches if the big couriers it relies on, such as FedEx and UPS, cap freight volumes.
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Corinne Pohlmann, executive vice-president of advocacy for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, says her organization asked members what they were worried about ahead of the Canada Post strike.
The Toronto-based company, which counts 500 employees and 12 warehouses across Canada and the U.S., carries out fulfilment services for the big players: storing, packing and shipping items for Canada Post, UPS, FedEx, the United States Postal Service and others.
“That helps relieve the reliance on a single carrier like Canada Post,” Stewart said, noting that a diverse range of clients eases the blow of a disruption at one of them.
“However, when it’s your national carrier, it’s quite impactful, because there are some areas that only they can access.”
Stewart is trying to head off basic logistics problems faced by customers during the last work stoppage. For example, he’s reminding customers to use an address rather than a PO box — a lockable box at a Canada Post site that other couriers can’t access — in the event of a strike.