Sabine El-Chidiac: Canada Post union addicted to irrelevancy
It's not déjà-vu, Canada Post might indeed go back on strike as early as this week. Canadians will remember with much anxiety that Canada Post workers recently went on strike in November, right as the holiday season was in full swing. That strike was perfectly timed to wreak as much havoc as possible in order to strengthen their bargaining power, destroying the most profitable time of year for charities and small business in Canada. Since the postal union and Canada Post ultimately could not reach an agreement, they were forced back to work by the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB), but not without securing a five per cent raise from Canada Post first.
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The CIRB placed a due date on further negotiations to come to an end by May 22, 2025, hence the predicament Canadians now find themselves in. The postal workers union has served Canada Post with a strike notice, and as many 55,000 workers could walk off the job as early Friday at midnight. Once again, charities and small businesses will potentially be affected, and consumers will also suffer further in the era of tariffs and trade wars that are already making life more expensive. Despite the chaos and massive loss of business that the last postal strike cost, little has been done to alleviate this situation since the deadline has been set.
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When a postal strike is called, small business owners relying on cheaper shipping for their customers through the national postal service have to start charging customers upwards of $15 for shipping, and for those whose products average $10-$40 like one jewelry maker from Ottawa I spoke with, that cost is far too high. Coupled with the backlogs, price hikes, and delays that carriers such as Fed-Ex would have to deal with when they pick up Canada Post's slack, small businesses still struggling to get back on their feet after the pandemic are going to take another devastating financial hit.
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The solution remains the same as when Canadians were held hostage at the holidays: breaking up the Canada Post monopoly. The Canada Post Corporation Act gives special privilege to the Crown coporation, which allows it to be the only ones who can deliver letter mail in Canada. European countries have already broken up their monopolies: as Canadian economist Vincent Geloso has pointed out, an EU directive has made it so that all letters have been open to competition since 2013, which effectively ends state-owned postal monopolies. Some European countries have gone as far as to privatize their postal system, and watched as prices for postal servic halifax.citynews.ca/…/canada-post-strike-key-issues-in-the-dispute-thats-holding-up-mail-delivery es fell as much as 17 per cent in Germany. That shows that privatization and breaking up a longstanding monopoly is possible, and beneficial, to citizens just trying to run their business, raise money for their charities, or just send a card to their grandmother.
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