Once again, the Liberals have used the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to crush a strike. After four weeks on strike, postal workers are returning to work. The union leadership accepted the CIRB’s order and called their troops to retreat.
Postal workers were fighting against the “Amazonification” of their working conditions. Canada Post management is trying to bring their working conditions into line with those of private delivery service workers who do business with Amazon—gig workers with no contracts and no protection.
For postal workers, the strike was an existential struggle.
A combative mood
No wonder, then, that the mood on the picket lines was combative. Right from the start of the strike, workers were discussing the possibility of defying back-to-work legislation. Several local union leaders were even raising this possibility.
When the Minister of Labour announced that he was asking the CIRB to break the strike, the reaction of many union locals was to prepare defiance.
This was the case, for example, in Saskatoon and Burnaby, where workers voted to defy. The Edmonton local union voted 68 per cent in favor of refusing to go back to work.
At yesterday’s demonstration outside Chrystia Freeland’s office, postal workers could be heard shouting “General strike! General strike!” A union leader from Scarborough, in his speech, called to organize this defiance.
According to some patchy information we’ve heard, some union locals in the Maritimes even refused to return to work for a few hours this morning.
Today, a “cross-picket” organized by workers from other unions is blocking a processing plant in Vancouver. While the tactic of organizing a picket without the participation of the workers concerned is in itself dubious, the postal workers themselves were nonetheless largely happy to see it, underlining once again the combative mood that prevailed.
A call from the union leadership to disobey the law would certainly have tapped into this simmering mood and sparked a fire. Conditions were ripe for a strike against the CIRB order.
Failure of leadership
But the union’s leadership didn’t organize this mood. On the contrary, it did everything in its power to suffocate it.
In exchange for the return to work, Canada Post conceded a five per cent wage increase retroactive to one year… which was already part of Canada Post’s first offer.
As usual, the union leadership has promised to challenge the decision in court, a losing strategy.
In its message to members sent on Monday 16 and ironically entitled “The fight goes on…”, the leadership states that “We understand that members want to hold the line until the last minute to show our disgust with what is currently happening.”
These words betray that they could see that this fighting mood existed. But they understood nothing. Members weren’t on the picket line to “express” their emotions, but to win!
Worse still: ILWU-affiliated workers participated at the cross-picket in Vancouver, but CUPW’s national executive contacted the Canadian Labour Congress to ask their ILWU affiliates to stop the solidarity picketing! This outrageous action shows that the executive is trying to stifle any opposition to their capitulation.
The anger is palpable. A worker at the Vancouver plant told a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party present at the picket: “National didn’t even ask us if we wanted to defy. They should have taken a vote, not forced us to go back.”
Another worker went even further: “The national should all resign. If they were smart and wanted to save themselves from humiliation at the next convention, they would all resign.”
Breaking the dynamic
This is a massive missed opportunity.
Over the past few years, employers have been clawing back, one by one, the gains workers have made over the years by attacking their wages and working conditions. And as soon as workers go on strike to defend themselves, governments are ready to use the law to force them back to work. This is what happened to longshoremen, railway workers and pilots, as well as postal workers in 2018.
This strike was the ideal chance to finally stop this trend. As another worker at a Vancouver processing plant told an RCP comrade, “You look at [past CUPW leader] Jean-Claude Parrot, people are still talking about him and what he did. He’s a legend. That’s from defying back to work. We had a chance to make labour history and we squandered it.”
The return to work is imposed until May 22, 2025. Until then, the fighting spirit of the union’s rank-and-file members must be organized. We need a union leadership that reflects the members’ will to fight and is ready to lead the struggle to victory by breaking the laws made to break the movement.
Ultimately, to put an end to management’s attacks, Canada Post must be placed under the democratic control of workers. Otherwise, the bosses who control it will continue to try to maximize profits at the expense of workers.
More than that, the entire delivery and logistics industry must be expropriated from the greedy hands of capitalists, and run according to people’s needs rather than the bosses’ thirst for profit.
We call on anyone who wants to bring back CUPW’s fighting traditions and fight for a revolutionary perspective in the workers’ movement to join the CUPW communists, and to join the RCP.
CUPW communists are organizing an emergency meeting this Saturday at 8pm Eastern time to discuss how to continue the struggle. It’s up to us to end the cycle of bosses attacking our right to strike and the union leadership caving in. Join us!
Report from Vancouver cross-picketing
CUPW workers and supporters were outraged at their national leadership and weren’t afraid to voice it at the solidarity picket put on by BCGEU in Vancouver. One of the vice presidents for CUPW in B.C. expressed his disgust with the leadership this way: “we represent the shop floor, not our own careers. The shop floor wants to defy, we’re going to defy.”
Just 1,000 feet away was the picket for ILWU Local 502, who were cross-picketing in solidarity with CUPW, along with ILWU president Rob Ashton. Scandalously, CUPW National even called on the CLC to get the ILWU to pull their support! After that, all the rank-and-file workers began discussing how they wanted to replace their leadership as soon as possible.
The posties on the line had no illusions in the courts, and even less so for the federal government. When one worker brought up the NDP, another told him that all the parties are the same and that “we need to worry about the fight down here, not up there.”
Summing up the betrayal by the national leadership, one postie put it this way: “this was the perfect opportunity, this should have been an easy win. Now what are we going to do?”
While there was an air of pessimism, many workers expressed exactly what needed to be done: gear up for a fight in May, or even earlier, by removing their current leadership and electing “more militant and honest” leaders.
–Matt K., Vancouver
