CUPW on the current situation with the postal lock out

Negotiations Going Nowhere: CPC Waits for Harper’s Law
June 22, 2011
Since the introduction of the back-to-work legislation into the House of Commons, there have been a few meetings between CUPW, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt and CPC officials, including CPC President Deepak Chopra. Yesterday, CUPW submitted a very serious proposal designed to break the deadlock. Today we received CPC's reply. Essentially they made no significant moves and are maintaining 10 demands for major rollbacks, including the elimination of sick leave, lower wages and deep cuts in benefits and pensions for new hires. They did nothing to address the problems of postal workers. They did offer to make a move on the issue of percentage of coverage for letter carriers on the condition that we agree to further lower the wages of new hires.

Meet the New Boss
Since the introduction of the legislation, the messages from CPC have been inconsistent and contradictory. In our first discussion with Deepak Chopra and Labour Minister Raitt, we were somewhat optimistic that there might be a serious effort to negotiate. Mr. Chopra made a commitment that the terms of CPC's June 9th offer were still on the table. However, less than two hours later, at a meeting of the finance sub-table, CPC formally reduced their wage proposal for new hires to $18.00 per hour from the $19.00 contained in the June 9th proposal. Since then, they have put back their offer of $19.00. Will it change again?

Same as the Old Boss
From the very beginning of this set of negotiations, CPC has maintained a hard line position designed by former CPC President Moya Greene before she abandoned Canada Post to go to the UK and receive a million dollar salary to privatize the Royal Mail. After she left, Prime Minister Harper appointed Deepak Chopra to perpetuate their agenda of deep cuts to our benefits, pensions and rights.
Since then, CPC has refused to bargain, stopped all mail delivery by locking us out, and done everything possible to provoke back-to-work legislation.

We Won't Be Fooled
During the next days, we can expect CPC, the Government and the corporate media to mount an attack on postal workers and CUPW. They will say anything to try and convince you and the public that we are to blame for the breakdown of bargaining and the back-to-work legislation. But we won't be fooled. We know we did everything possible to negotiate a collective agreement that meets our needs and preserves public postal services. We entered these negotiations with a practical and modest set of demands, but we were met with a brick wall of corporate greed.
If the government and Mr. Chopra believe they can defeat postal workers, they are seriously mistaken. We will continue to demand justice for ourselves and others. We will continue to exercise all of the rights that we have under our collective agreement. And we will continue to fight for improved postal services to the public. We will continue to struggle for a collective agreement that is freely negotiated and ratified by the membership.

No Justice, No Peace. The Struggle Continues.