Workers at Canada Post are facing an uncertain future. A quick glance at the publicly owned corporation shows that we’re sailing in troubled waters. We have a CEO who is hell-bent on pushing down wages and working conditions and privatizing the company. The Conservative government would certainly not put a stop to this. Canada Post itself has a massive bureaucracy that is incapable of doing anything quickly or efficiently. All the while, workers are being forced to sort and deliver more mail in less time. It is becoming abundantly clear that this model for a publicly owned company is a failure, but what is the alternative?

Against Privatization

The political lackeys of big business would have us believe that the only solution to the problems at Canada Post is privatization. There is an endless flow of propaganda in the mainstream press explaining that public companies are cumbersome, inefficient, bureaucratic monstrosities that cannot deliver services or cut costs. They argue that only “free market” principals will improve service while reducing costs. This argument has been used for the last decade to pillage the public sector in Canada. Province by province, right wing governments have come to power and torn apart social services that were won in the last period. But the argument simply does not fit the facts.

While there is a certain argument about the bureaucratic nature of public companies that are run from the top down, the record for privatized companies is dismal. Again and again it is shown that privatization leads to higher costs and poorer services. A publicly owned corporation simply needs to pay for the cost of operations, but a private company requires profit on top of that. Contrary to popular opinion, Canada Post has been running in the black for a long time. This extra money is either reinvested into the company or goes into general government revenue. Privatizing Canada Post would simply mean handing over hundreds of millions of dollars a year to corporate interests.

Every country that has privatized their postal service has seen increased costs and decreased service. Private companies inevitably try to bring down their labour costs. This means attacks against the living standards of the people who deliver the mail. This usually results in massive labour unrest and any savings that are made from cutting wages just ends up in the profit pool for the company. Why would they bother to give it back to the public? There are plenty of right-wing think tanks arguing that everything from the post office to the healthcare system should be privatized. The real motivation for such demands is not improved service, but simply to line the pocket of some millionaire.

Against Deregulation

There is another idea altogether that has private investors drooling. A few of the more intelligent capitalists have come to the conclusion that they don’t need to privatize Canada Post, they just need to deregulate it. The idea is to let Canada Post handle the more expensive aspects of mail delivery, like say delivering a letter to Inuvic for fifty-two cents, while allowing private companies to do the more profitable work. This shows the hypocrisy of big business. There is an endless hue and cry about the need to privatize public services, but the second they think they can make a few more dollars they change their tune! The millionaires want the best of both worlds. They want Canada Post to take care of all of the costs, while they take all of the profits.

There is a certain advantage to having a public monopoly on mail delivery. One integrated mail system operated by one company allows for a much more efficient delivery. This also allows for cross subsidization of different parts of the mail stream. As it stands, the general public can mail a letter anywhere in the country for one low price. Of course, sending a letter several thousand kilometers across the country costs more than the fifty-two cents charged, but the local deliveries subsidize this. Shipping packages to far off places in Canada would be especially costly if it wasn’t for this provision. In fact, several private courier companies have been known to simply mail their packages through Canada Post to places they can’t deliver to profitably.

The conservative government has already introduced legislation to deregulate international mail. Bill C-14 will allow private companies to send and receive letters from international destinations. This bill alone could hand over millions of dollars in revenue to private business. By chipping away at the more profitable sections of the post office, they hope to leave the most expensive parts of the mail service on the public tab. Eventually, after all of the most profitable sections have been pawned off, Canada Post will be constantly losing money and the cries for the need to privatize it will start to gain an echo. The infrastructure will be sold off to the highest bidder and the only winners will be big business.

Against the Status Quo

Some in our union have correctly seen these dangers on the horizon. They understand the catastrophe that privatization would be and they realize that deregulation is just privatization by stealth. But their response to these threats is to simply oppose them, without offering an alternative. It is clear from the view on the shop floor that the whole structure of Canada Post in not sustainable.

Of Canada Post’s 72,000 employees only about 50,000 of them are Canadian Union of Postal Workers members. That leaves the corporation with an awful lot of managers! Canada Post is so top heavy it is at risk of falling over. The corporation has been hiring hundreds of new mangers and most are hired “off the street”, with no experience in the post office at all. The reason for this is simple, they know that if they promote from within the company, their managers will be sympathetic towards the employees. Canada Post has a reputation for hiring ex-cops and prison guards for their management team.

There is a continual drive to speed up delivery. Letter carrier routes are getting longer. It is not uncommon for a letter carrier to sort and deliver to over 1,000 calls in a day. Inside workers are being asked to sort more mail in less time. All of this is leading to increased on-the-job injuries. There are currently over 10,000 injured workers on some kind of modified duties at Canada Post.

From the perspective of the general public, the biggest problem with the current structure of Canada Post is the lack of service and direction coming from the top of the corporation. Service to the public is decreasing as Canada Post installs more and more community mail boxes, eliminating door to door delivery. There is also a huge push from above to deliver as much junk mail as humanly possible. Canada Post prioritizes flyers for delivery at the same level as first class mail. This has been a cash-cow for the company, but is universally hated by the general public – the owners of Canada Post. What is the point in having a publicly owned post office if it is run like a private company?
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For Workers’ Control of Canada Post

It is not enough to simply decry the present state of affairs; we need to offer a solution. We first need an answer for the general direction of the post office. We need to be sure that our public corporation is being run in the interest of the public. The solution to this is obvious. Canada Post needs a board of directors elected by the public. The public should set the direction for their postal service and only public elections will achieve this. There should also be representation from the workforce elected to the board. These board members, some elected by the public, others by the employees would have a much better grasp of the postal system as a whole and the direction the public wants their company to go.

The day-to-day operations of Canada Post are currently regulated by an out-of-touch, mostly incompetent managerial clique. This must change. The people who best understand the mail stream are the people who actually run it. Supervisors should be elected directly from the shop floor. This way we can guarantee that supervisors have the most knowledge of a given station and have earned the respect of their peers over time.

The weekly or semi-weekly meetings where employees are currently forced to stand and listen to their managers should be converted into employee driven meetings. The workers must have the final say. These regular meetings should have the power to make decisions, elect supervisors from the floor and recall those that aren’t making decisions in the interest of everyone. In this way we can have an organic link between supervisors and employees. This structure would facilitate employee engagement and generally minimize conflicts between supervisors and workers. With direct input from the shop floor many inefficiencies could be eliminated. Committees to deal with things like route measurement, general operations and hiring of new staff should also be elected from the rank and file.

This agenda should be taken on by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. Ultimately this will only be implemented through the mass action of employees combined with a campaign amongst the general public. The leaders of CUPW must rise to this historical challenge. A first step would be a campaign for the removal of Article 2 of the collective agreement, which guarantees Canada Post’s “right to manage”. A series of educational courses and action committees could begin to mobilize the rank and file for this struggle.

With this structure implemented, Canada Post would be back on track to serve the people, as a public corporation should. The new management structure would allow a more efficient delivery, without compromising employee safety. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers would still play a valuable role representing individuals who are unhappy with a given situation, but decades of abrasive labour relations would be largely ended. Canada Post would not only serve the public in a better way, but would be an example to the rest of society.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has long been at the forefront of the labour movement. Many historical victories such as the public sector’s right to strike and maternity leave were won by the postal workers; CUPW could be the first to begin a serious fight for workers’ control of industry. The capitalist system has brought nothing but misery to the working class of Canada. It has long outlived its usefulness. A fight for workers’ control of Canada Post would have wider implications for the rest of the labour movement. What is needed ultimately is for all of society to be run this way; we need a democratically planned economy with production for need and not greed. If the NDP and the labour movement as a whole were to adopt a socialist program and begin a real struggle to transform society, capitalism wouldn’t last a day.

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