Gunter: Canada Post overdue for privatization

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No one’s getting rich working at Canada Post.

Letter carriers start at just under $50,000 a year. Supervisors at mail-sorting plants can earn up to $74,000. Clerks fetch about $45,000.

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Anywhere else, and there might be plenty of sympathy for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) demands for a nearly 24% pay raise over four years.

But this isn’t 1955 when the mail was vital to the functioning of the nation – to the operation of government, to the profitability of businesses and the connection of family and friends.

Now, Canada Post is about as vital as milkmen or elevator operators or buggy repair craftsmen.

The federal government should sell it off or close it down.

The charities and small businesses that claim to “need” Canada Post to stay afloat have, for the last decade, seen a declining portion of their incomes come in by postal delivery, already. Closing down Canada Post would only hasten the ongoing conversion to digital communication and commerce.

It seems the union, which went out on strike last fall before being pressured back to work by the federal government, and which has been threatening to resume its strike any day now, isn’t really all that keen to walk off the job.

In addition to a hefty raise in pay, CUPW has also asked for improved group benefits (including coverage for fertility treatments and gender-affirming care), longer paid medical leaves and, my favourite, “improved protections against technological change.”

If a robot can do a union job better and faster, CUPW wants it stopped.

In its “final offer,” the Crown corporation offered employees only about half of what they were asking, wage-wise. It also wanted the ability to add part-time workers, particularly on weekends, to deliver packages and thereby compete with Amazon and its other delivery services.

Here’s why I’m guessing CUPW members are not all that keen to go on strike: Only a little more than two-thirds of them voted for a walkout. Given that some characterized the corporation’s final offer as “an insult,” just about a third of them nonetheless voted to accept it in the face of their union’s advice to reject it.

While the majority voted to withdraw their services, a sizable chunk of post office workers don’t want to strike.

You have to call the ‘no’ voters, the realists. They can see the handwriting on the wall. They suspect that if they push their demands too hard, there is already enough momentum away from using postal services that another strike might compel the government into actions the union wouldn’t like, such as privatization.

Already, most of what letter carriers bring to our house are fast food coupons, real estate brochures (“We buy houses!”), and ads from university students keen to paint our deck or fence, or window trim.

Industrial inquiry commissioner, William Kaplan, appointed after the union agreed to suspend its strike back in December, concluded in May that Canada Post is “effectively insolvent.” Kaplan recommended an end to daily door-to-door residential service, the closure of some rural post offices and the installation of more community mailboxes, often called superboxes.

“Without thoughtful, measured, staged, but immediate changes, (Canada Post’s) fiscal situation will continue to deteriorate,” which could lead to an end of government mail delivery.

Both Britain and Germany have already privatized their postal services, with the proviso that the private-sector owners maintain USO – a Universal Service Obligation, one price for first-class letter mail from anywhere in the country to anywhere else.

But the private owners are permitted to try new fees for services, new product offerings and, in some cases, new staggered delivery schedules – three time a week, for instance, rather than five or six.

The same is long overdue in Canada. If CUPW walks out again, the day of privatization will move closer.