To the editor:
The Liberal Government and Canada Post colluded to delay bargaining for postal workers and have effectively stolen tens of millions of dollars from postal worker dues, and stolen a month's worth of wages from 55,000 postal workers.
Workers have one power against corporations and governments: the right to remove their labour. Millions have been spent in vain for strike pay, and postal workers have lost a month's wages while exercising this right. With the unilateral order by Minister Steven MacKinnon to end the strike, he has effectively stolen that money because there is no pressure left for Canada Post to bargain, erased like chalk off a blackboard; an early Christmas gift from Trudeau.
The government claims the back-to-work order is about getting food and medicine to First Nations, whom the CUPW strongly support. This issue was well known, and management should have made arrangements for it as they do for social assistance and pension cheques, which postal workers have delivered despite any job action. This is a made-up crisis produced by management, and I am certain provisions could have been made, but instead, MacKinnon got “creative.”
So now Minister MacKinnon has come up with a “creative way” to end the strike. Creative it is not, criminal maybe. What MacKinnon has effectively done is force postal workers back to work so that Canada Post can continue to drag their feet for another six months, and then if the Union needs to strike again, OOOOPS! there is no more strike fund because Minister MacKinnon stole those four weeks of pressure and flushed it down the toilet. MacKinnon knows, as I know, that Canada Post is horrible in binding arbitration, so he gave the management team that created this crisis a free pass. So the four weeks postal workers were out is erased like it never happened, while Canada Post maintains all their power, and has the full support of their owners, the government.
It seems that many issues south of the border have woken up American workers to the fact they are fighting a class war and not a culture war. Western politicians are desperately trying to dupe voters into believing their neighbours or other workers are the problem. This is done to deflect voters' attention from the erosion of worker rights, theft of their wages, and rising prices from corporations.
Labour laws were brought about to herald labour peace so that wildcat strikes did not occur anymore. It is time for the Canadian Labour Congress to step up to the plate and make some noise. Hopefully about a general strike. If not, let the wildcat strikes begin. And hopefully sooner rather than later, because a government breaking laws takes years to correct in the courts, when we could follow the path of the workers in France and just stop working until the government stops breaking the law.
Mark Evard
Retired postal worker and union representative
East Ferris
