Postal Strike
- Thread starter Walter
- Start date
I heard a warning about it from one of my credit cards. I only get one bill by mail and I can get that online if I need to so no big deal. I mail maybe 3 letters a year. Let them strike. Of course, the current PM no doubt will give them a nice big bonus. Not sure if it is inside or outside workers.
I mailed the grand total of 1 letter this year. Last year - no a single one. Let them strike. I get all my bills by email and pay all of them online.
I do everything on credit, I know I know... But at the end of the day they get their money and I pay it off to keep prime+ niiiiigggggggaaaaaa!!!!
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Like most people in the 21st century.. If I really need to send something, UPS because it has to be there fast.
Michael Laxer highlight how the manufactured problems at Canada Post - with consistent profits deemed insufficient without explanation in order to attack working conditions, and plans for a postal bank which would both raise profits and provide an important public service given short shrift - are only part of the wider hostility against the public sector.
The "problems" facing Canada Post are entirely ideological
Canada's politicians and media have bought into a long-term project driven by right-wing notions of society and the economy that seeks to re-frame public services as "businesses" that should be run "efficiently" along the lines allegedly followed by the private sector.
While the mythology of the private sector's supposed efficiency is nothing more than that, mythology, that is a matter for a different article.
What is abundantly clear is that by seeking to apply fictional market ideals to government run services successive governments have sought -- intentionally or instinctively -- to change the way the public views these services by no longer treating them as services at all.
Canada Post is run not as a public service for the public interest but as a corporation that seeks to make a profit, which is not the purpose of a public service.
Last year Canada Post actually made a profit of $63 million. While this is, I suppose, a positive thing, it also means that there is at minimum $63 million that could be put back into providing a still very necessary service for the Canadian people and businesses.
Yet Canada Post on its own webpage bemoans this profit as somehow insufficient and states "The profit is modest compared to the Corporation's revenue and the significant challenges we face as a company."
What company? What Corporation? Reading this you would have no idea that this "company" was government run and was, at least once-upon-a-time, designed to serve the interests of the people of Canada. It reads as a private company's announcement to shareholders would and shows how far along the path to eventual privatization Canada Post's management has taken it
All of the "issues" facing Canada Post, from the desire of management to eliminate door-to-door delivery, to the constant increase in postal rates, to its confrontational stance taken towards its own workers that are leading to this impending lockout, are driven by this notion of the postal service as a for-profit enterprise and all of them could be dealt with by changing this fundamentally flawed and anti-public service neoliberal approach.
The irony is that this ethos is even harmful to the very private sector that encourages it. Canada Post's rates have gone up-and-up-and-up and are not at all competitive versus the United States Postal Service as anyone who depends on parcel delivery for their business is well aware. Instead of the government subsidizing the postal service sufficiently to keep rates low, Canada Post has kept increasing rates despite having turned a profit in all but two of the last 21 years. This puts Canadian retailers at a direct competitive disadvantage.
The ethos is also the very basis of Canada Post's "rush-to-the-bottom" attitudes to employees imported from the private sector that seeks to maximize profit at the expense of workers even if this leads to a socially and economically harmful labour and service disruption.
This is what creates the ideological conditions in which we see a statement like:
"We need a more flexible model," Canada Post spokesperson Jon Hamilton told CTV News.
"We need a model that allows us to deliver on evenings and weekends and peak times without having to pay double time, which is pricing us out of the market."
Of course, it is only pricing Canada Post "out of the market" if Canada Post and its operations are driven by market forces.
And they are only driven by market forces due to the actions of Canada Post itself and successive governments that have sought to turn a critical public service into a for-profit enterprise driven entirely by neoliberal and private sector notions to transition it from acting in the public good towards preparation for privatization.
As part of the critical struggle to reverse the assault on the very idea of government and a civil society beyond the market that has been intrinsic to the neoliberal ideological austerity era, we need to fight to reconstruct the idea of the state and its enterprises and services as existing to benefit the people who own them -- the public -- as opposed to operating on business lines and models that are inimical to this and for which they were never originally intended.
Canada Post's problems are driven by the neoliberal assault on public services | rabble.ca
The "problems" facing Canada Post are entirely ideological
Canada's politicians and media have bought into a long-term project driven by right-wing notions of society and the economy that seeks to re-frame public services as "businesses" that should be run "efficiently" along the lines allegedly followed by the private sector.
While the mythology of the private sector's supposed efficiency is nothing more than that, mythology, that is a matter for a different article.
What is abundantly clear is that by seeking to apply fictional market ideals to government run services successive governments have sought -- intentionally or instinctively -- to change the way the public views these services by no longer treating them as services at all.
Canada Post is run not as a public service for the public interest but as a corporation that seeks to make a profit, which is not the purpose of a public service.
Last year Canada Post actually made a profit of $63 million. While this is, I suppose, a positive thing, it also means that there is at minimum $63 million that could be put back into providing a still very necessary service for the Canadian people and businesses.
Yet Canada Post on its own webpage bemoans this profit as somehow insufficient and states "The profit is modest compared to the Corporation's revenue and the significant challenges we face as a company."
What company? What Corporation? Reading this you would have no idea that this "company" was government run and was, at least once-upon-a-time, designed to serve the interests of the people of Canada. It reads as a private company's announcement to shareholders would and shows how far along the path to eventual privatization Canada Post's management has taken it
All of the "issues" facing Canada Post, from the desire of management to eliminate door-to-door delivery, to the constant increase in postal rates, to its confrontational stance taken towards its own workers that are leading to this impending lockout, are driven by this notion of the postal service as a for-profit enterprise and all of them could be dealt with by changing this fundamentally flawed and anti-public service neoliberal approach.
The irony is that this ethos is even harmful to the very private sector that encourages it. Canada Post's rates have gone up-and-up-and-up and are not at all competitive versus the United States Postal Service as anyone who depends on parcel delivery for their business is well aware. Instead of the government subsidizing the postal service sufficiently to keep rates low, Canada Post has kept increasing rates despite having turned a profit in all but two of the last 21 years. This puts Canadian retailers at a direct competitive disadvantage.
The ethos is also the very basis of Canada Post's "rush-to-the-bottom" attitudes to employees imported from the private sector that seeks to maximize profit at the expense of workers even if this leads to a socially and economically harmful labour and service disruption.
This is what creates the ideological conditions in which we see a statement like:
"We need a more flexible model," Canada Post spokesperson Jon Hamilton told CTV News.
"We need a model that allows us to deliver on evenings and weekends and peak times without having to pay double time, which is pricing us out of the market."
Of course, it is only pricing Canada Post "out of the market" if Canada Post and its operations are driven by market forces.
And they are only driven by market forces due to the actions of Canada Post itself and successive governments that have sought to turn a critical public service into a for-profit enterprise driven entirely by neoliberal and private sector notions to transition it from acting in the public good towards preparation for privatization.
As part of the critical struggle to reverse the assault on the very idea of government and a civil society beyond the market that has been intrinsic to the neoliberal ideological austerity era, we need to fight to reconstruct the idea of the state and its enterprises and services as existing to benefit the people who own them -- the public -- as opposed to operating on business lines and models that are inimical to this and for which they were never originally intended.
Canada Post's problems are driven by the neoliberal assault on public services | rabble.ca
Have you ever heard of email?? Welcome to 2016.
Their package delivery is quite convenient. They have many local postal outlets for easy pick up of signature shipments.
Ya, I'd like to see you do the job for that pay. Hypocrite.
Heard on the news that the union made another offer. Someone in that Union must realize that if they strike, they are cutting of their nose to spite their face.
Get with the times, Walter, they have this new system now, actually had it for a few months, where if you keep some money in your bank account and send the owee a voided cheque they can actually make arrangements with the banks to have the balance transferred from your bank account to theirs on the appointed date it's due. Works slicker than snot on a rail!
That's what Unions do!
A major employer went on strike here for 6 months
went back to work for a nickle less an hour
now that factory is just a huge empty parking lot out on the highway just out side the edge of town
nothin but the sound of crickets and the odd tumble weed blowin through
Its ok though
not much call for buggy whips these days
went back to work for a nickle less an hour
now that factory is just a huge empty parking lot out on the highway just out side the edge of town
nothin but the sound of crickets and the odd tumble weed blowin through
Its ok though
not much call for buggy whips these days
Get with the times, Walter, they have this new system now, actually had it for a few months, where if you keep some money in your bank account and send the owee a voided cheque they can actually make arrangements with the banks to have the balance transferred from your bank account to theirs on the appointed date it's due. Works slicker than snot on a rail!
If you're silly enough to let a greedy company go on unrestricted plundering trips through your bank account, you deserve the robbery you're inviting. Case in point? Hydro One....
