Post Office on the chopping block

Watch Denis Lemelin, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, make an impassioned plea to save his country’s postal service. He says if the proposed changes were to go through at Canada Post, it would be the “end of an era.” It would also be the end of mail delivery that was affordable and consistent.

You may think when Canada’s postal service announced it would cease home delivery over the next five years while dramatically raising rates has nothing to do with you. Well, you would be wrong,

The people behind the well funded, aggressive effort to privatize law enforcement jobs everywhere are the same players determined to turn national postal services over to private industry. Funded by companies like Fedex and UPS, the effort puts out propaganda that declining volume of mail and escalating labor and pension costs are making mail operations run by the government untenable, exactly the same argument made about teachers, pubic safety and other functions of the government. The truth is they want their greedy paws on your pension funds and they want their companies to control your jobs.

Along with the service cuts, the Canada Post said it would eliminate 8000 jobs, mostly through attrition.

“A leaner work force will create a more flexible and competitive Canada Post,” the post office announced in the summary of their five-point plan. “Canada Post has a mandate to fund its operations with revenues from the sale of its products and services, rather than become a burden on taxpayers.”

In place of home delivery, Canadians who live in cities would have to pick up their mail and parcels at so-called community mailboxes, which would be established in neighborhoods across the nation. Apartment-dwellers would continue to pick up their mail in their buildings.

While the service argued that the communal boxes had “advantages for busy Canadians,” the announcement was swiftly and widely criticized by opposition politicians and labor leaders, who noted that the price of a stamp bought in a booklet would increase, to 85 cents from 63 cents.

The leader of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Denis Lemelin, called the cutbacks and the rise in postage rates “shortsighted and foolish.”

“We are sure we are not alone in disagreeing with Canada Post’s plan,” Mr. Lemelin said in a statement on the union’s website. “C.U.P.W. will stand with those people who resist the elimination of door-to-door delivery.”

Reactions on social media were blunter, pointing out the difficulties that the end of delivery would bring for older and disabled people and suggesting that Canada Post had condemned itself to irrelevancy.

Maybe it’s time for law enforcement unions to step up to the plate and support their brother and sister postal workers. It may be Canada, but you can rest assured, it’s going to happen in the U.S. and Australia. Guaranteed.