The Postal Workers Strike Back

But in a digital world, would a mail strike actually accomplish anything?

Canada Post's looming postal strike gives business columnists the perfect opportunity to call for the privatization of mail delivery. Let's start off with the National Post's Tasha Kheiriddin, who lists the perks Canada Post's employees are entitled to – retirement at 55, banking sick days, great starting wages – and dismisses the Canadian Union of Postal Workers' demands as selfish. “Many Canadians are struggling to get by with no raises, little job security and few days off,” says Kheiriddin. “In an era of both austerity and declining use of Canada Post’s business, CUPW’s demands make little sense and engender little sympathy from a public, which is already replacing envelopes with email.” But then, CUPW wouldn't be doing much for its members – those who pay to keep it afloat – if it rolled over at the first demand from management to pare back wages and benefits.

A postal strike would provide the perfect impetus for the government to expose Canada Post to more competition, writes Jay Bryan in the Montreal Gazette. “If there were competition, the normal rules of labour negotiations would apply, with both sides acutely aware that a strike would drive customers elsewhere, threatening lost union jobs and perhaps some changes to the management suite,” says Bryan. Likewise, the rising price of sending mail would slow due to competitors undercutting Canada Post, and there would be more motivation for all mail services to get letters to their destinations quicker. Bryan points out that reform has brought such results in Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, and nearly every economic think-tank has urged Canada to follow suit.

Michael Babad of The Globe and Mail wonders “how many people would be overly exercised if postal workers strike on Thursday night?” and decides the answer is a lot fewer than during the last walkout, in 1997. “When you're known as 'snail mail,' you've really got to question your bargaining power,” says Babad, bringing up the fact that the volume of mail has declined by 17 per cent in the last five years. Holding the country's mail delivery hostage doesn't have nearly the same impact when an iPhone can do all the same things short of sending packages.