Today, February 19, the Industrial Inquiry Commission held its third day of hearings. We received an update on the number of submissions made to the Commission before the public deadline – approximately 900! The Commission hopes to have these all made available to the Parties by Friday.
Canada Post: Rinse and Repeat
Canada Post CEO, Doug Ettinger, emphasized that the post office can be a reliable solution for small and medium-sized business to help them grow and serve Canadians amid the US tariff threat – a point we argued in our brief and our presentation today.
However, Canada Post went on to repeat many of the points it made in January. Ettinger emphasized that it requires major regulatory and policy changes to become financially self-sustainable once again – that the status quo will no longer work. This includes ending the moratorium on rural post office closures and resuming Community Mailbox conversion, and the need for a faster process to approval of stamp price increases.
Alexandre Brisson spoke about their productivity rate, issues with trap time, that the restructure process is too slow, route ownership is a problem, and their inability to respond to the dynamic nature of the parcel business.
Canada Post also blamed our collective agreements for its financial hardships, and effectively, that it needs to gut our agreements and create a more “flexible” workforce.
CUPW Defends its Positions
Our submission and presentations focused on several key issues. First, as we have said from the start, this Commission is not a proper substitute for collective bargaining. Once again, the Government has intervened to undermine our legal right to strike. But unlike in the past, the Government has not imposed arbitration but forced us into a process that has only made bargaining harder. The Commission has been asked to deal with issues, like the structure of Canada Post, that were not part of our bargaining and should only be addressed in a fully public mandate review.
We raised concerns again about Canada Post’s self-serving financial reporting. For instance, at the last hearing we learned from Mr. Ettinger that Canada Post’s latest stamp rate increase will generate “several hundred million” dollars in additional yearly revenue – despite every public release stating the increase would bring in $80 million. Mr. Ettinger noted the $80 million was for “regulated” products only, but this raises questions: It seems like Canada Post wants to hide important financial information from the Union, from employees, and from the public.
The Union also presented its own vision for weekend delivery, which prioritizes full-time over part-time jobs. We showed that by adding just a few full-time jobs in depots where it wanted to roll it out, Canada Post could take on weekend parcel delivery without having to rely too much on part-time, insecure jobs.
On top of that, we gave the Commission more detail on our service expansion proposals, including strong examples from international postal systems and insight into how Appendix “T” in the Urban collective agreement can be used to test new services and create new jobs.
Hearings to Continue, Livestream Available
Hearings will continue tomorrow, February 20. Both the Union and the Employer will have the opportunity to present their rebuttals to the other side’s submissions.
As they were today, the proceedings will again be livestreamed. We will send the link via eDigest and our Member Database email list tomorrow morning.
Bulletin no. 213 2
February 19, 2025
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In solidarity,
Jan Simpson
National President
2023-2027 / Bulletin #213