Local striking postal workers joined some 55,000 of their colleagues who walked out nationwide as they picketed outside the Canada Post building on the corner of Worthington Street East and Ferguson Street in North Bay on Friday.
Four other locations in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) Local 576 coverage area also are seeing strike action on Friday, including Canada Post offices in Bonfield, Callander, Powassan and Sturgeon Falls. The strike became official at 12:01 a.m. today.
See related: No need to check mailbox today: Canada Post workers on strike
For Cara-Lee Lyttle, Local 576's president, the presence of striking workers in the smaller locales in a region that covers north from North Bay to Temagami, west to Warren, east to Mattawa, and south to South River is an important way to get the members' message out.
"Local 576 is very proud to be coming from our small communities and we're trying to make sure that people see us out in our communities but that we're not overstepping or causing issues in the smaller communities," Lyttle says. "Because, when you think about it, we know all of our customers, and we really want to get back to delivering mail to our customers. It's just that Canada Post has some sticking points right now that we don't agree with."
See also: Canada Post workers are on strike. Here's what you need to know about your mail
When CUPW issued its 72-hour strike notice earlier this week, the union said, over one year of bargaining, it had been asking for fair wages, safer working conditions and other improvements, The Canadian Press reports. "We still believe we can achieve negotiated collective agreements, but Canada Post must be willing to resolve our new and outstanding issues," the national union said in a statement.
Lyttle tells BayToday, "We're out on strike because we're trying to protect our benefits and our pension and Canada Post is trying to roll back a lot of what we've already fought for. They're rolling it back for the new employees so we're fighting for the new people who are coming through.
The union says it is at odds with Canada Post's plan to move new employees to a less secure pension plan.
Long-time employees "know what we're coming out with, in the end," Lyttle shares, "and they're switching it over to a pension plan where there isn't that security, where the employee is going to have to pick whether they want a low-, medium- or high-risk pension. And so it's going from a guarantee, this is what your pension is going to be when you're retiring to let's see what the stock market does, and you might not have all that much of a pension coming out."
Canada Post released a statement early Friday morning confirming that customers will experience delays as a result of the strike, according to CP. Mail and parcels will not be delivered for the duration of the strike, and some post offices will be closed. Canada Post said shutting down facilities will affect its national network, with processing and delivery of mail possibly needing time to return to normal once the strike is over.
The striking Canada Post workers have the support of Teamsters Canada, as its members at Purolator say they will not handle any packages postmarked or identified as originating from the carrier.
There is a possibility the employees will be legislated back to work, agreed Lyttle. "There's always concern for that. In the history of us going out on strike, yes, we constantly get legislated back to work by calling us an essential service but we don't get paid as an essential service."
Back-to-work legislation aside, the Local president maintains the resolve of her 145 members is strong and the strike fund is plentiful.
"We can afford to be out. And national, from what they've been telling us is that it's willing to be out, and we've prepared all of our members that we might be out for one, two days, but we also might be out for a few weeks, and to prepare for that. So we've been preparing for the last two, or three months."
