I receive four cheques every month, none of them via Canada post. Any person with a bank account need not depend on Canada Post to receive his/her cheque.
What's up with all the strikes lately?
- Thread starter mentalfloss
- Start date
I receive four cheques every month, none of them via Canada post. Any person with a bank account need not depend on Canada Post to receive his/her cheque.
Some years ago, not everybody had refrigerators, TV's, CD players, cameras, cars, freezers, etc., etc.
Then the prices of these and many other items I did not mention dropped so that EVERYONE could afford them.
Today, computers have reached the price that EVERYONE can afford one, provided they use their wealth wisely.
Bills and cheques can be delivered online, newspapers can be read online, recipes can be found online, long lost relatives and friends can be found online - shall I go on?
The only thing left is parcel delivery. If the private companies did not have to compete with the heavily taxpayer subsidized Canada Post, they could do their job faster and less expensively than Canada Post.
Bottom line: This Strike is reminiscent of buggy whip manufacturers' panic when they heard of Henry Ford.
Perhaps you are just ignorant, but there is still mail that must be sent out as a letter correspondence. At least in the industry that I work in, there actually exists government legislation, ensuring that that correspondence is mailed out.
Privatized mail would actually cost corporations more, because they would have certain services for urban areas and other, more costly services to rural locations.
I don't think he's ignorant, I think both you and he make good points. However that is the percentage of correspondence that HAS to be sent by mail? 1%, 2%? Government legislation can also change quite suddenly as we've just seen. :smile:
Unless you first look in the mirror, and see the REAL you, stop calling others ignorant.
I repeat: If private carriers did not have to compete against the heavily tax-payer subsidized and even worse, UNION DOMINATED Canada Post they could and would do the same job cheaper and more efficiently.
Wrong again.
“Postal deregulation would allow private companies to deliver mail in the lucrative urban areas while the public post office is left to service the higher-cost rural and isolated areas,” said Lemelin. “This is a recipe for drastic service cuts, job loss and post office closures.”
Poll shows public against private mail delivery
--
Also, it's doing more harm than good in the Netherlands..
Each week, Dutch households and businesses are visited by postmen and postwomen from four different companies. TNT delivers six days a week, Sandd and Selekt two, and VSP one. From the point of view of an ardent free-marketeer, this sounds like healthy competition. Curiously, however, none of the competitors is prospering.
TNT is being forced by the hedge funds and other transnational shareholders who control its destiny to split up, even as it tries to beautify its bottom line by replacing reasonably paid jobs with badly paid ones. Deutsche Post is pulling out of the Netherlands and selling Selekt to Sandd – a company that has never made a profit.
In the Netherlands, as in Britain, the postal market has been liberalised in the name of the consumer. Competition, it is said, will benefit everybody. But competition, as Leijten noted, only really exists for large organisations. Private citizens can't post letters in Sandd or Selekt mailboxes. There aren't any. Ordinary Dutch people still have to pay 46 cents to send a TNT letter. The Dutch government, meanwhile, has negotiated a deal with Sandd to deliver some of its mail at 11 cents a pop. "For ordinary people, there's no choice, there's only TNT," Leijten said. "The postal system is sick."
Privatised mail: a second-class delivery | UK news | The Guardian
--
So privatization is not the right move. It's just another trick by conservatives to put more power into the hands of corporations and away from citizens.
Again, in the name of profit.
Last edited:
Don't be tossing reality around to someone in a 2 dimensional world when reality is 3 dimensional. It'll freak them out!
Canada Post Debate Rife with Misinformation
With Sunday night's Senate approval of the bill ordering locked-out Canada Post employees back to work and mandating a new contract with lower wage increases than the company's final offer, it's worth looking back at the media coverage and public discussion of the labour conflict.
Let's set aside, for a moment, the notion that Canada Post workers are simultaneously so irrelevant they should be chided for attempting to negotiate a good contract, and yet so essential that the government had to intervene to legislate them back to work.
In the public debate over the Canada Post labour dispute, I've been surprised at the sheer volume of misinformation flying around - even from media 'authorities' that are supposed to know better.
The first thing we need to do is squash the false information kicking around in letters to the editor, website comments and even some op-eds and editorials. Following are some important facts everyone should who wants to pontificate should first understand:
1. Canada Post is not taxpayer funded.
That's right: your taxes do not pay for Canada Post employees. The company is 100% funded from its own revenues in lettermail stamps, parcel delivery, direct marketing and so on. The wages and benefits that Canada Post employees are fighting to protect cost you nothing as a taxpayer.
2. Canada Post is a crown corporation.
The Post has not been a department of the government since the Canada Post Corporation Act was implemented in 1981. It operates at arm's length from the government but is subject to federal regulations around service levels, pricing and so on.
3. Canada Post is profitable.
Canada Post has turned a net profit for each of the past fifteen years. For the fiscal year ending in December 2009, the corporation reported a profit of $281 million and paid $38 million in taxes. Profits were up $191 million over the previous year, despite a 5 percent reduction in operational revenue.
4. Canada Post has one of the lowest stamp prices in the industrialized world.
Federal regulations cap lettermail stamp price increases below the rate of inflation, so the real, inflation-adjusted price of a stamp tends to fall over time.
5. Employees do not start at seven weeks vacation.
When an employee is promoted to regular full time, generally after several years as a "casual" part time employee with no guaranteed hours, they get three weeks of vacation. Under the previous contract, employees do not reach seven weeks vacation until they have 28 years of employment.
6. The unionized employees were locked out.
After talks broke down, the union instituted rolling strikes to make a point without stopping mail delivery. It was Canada Post that locked the workers out and completely shut down mail operations.
7. The job is hard.
A lot of commentary in op-eds, letters to the editor and online discussion suggests that letter carriers are "lazy", "overpaid", "uneducated" and so on. However, the job itself is extremely difficult. It isn't the stroll-through-the-neighbourhood sinecure that many people seem to think it is, and it hasn't been for years.
Most routes in the lower city, for example, are around 15 kilometres in length and include hundreds of points of call. If a route has 500 houses and each house has four steps to the mailbox, that's 2,000 stairs up and down.
That much walking would be tiring enough on its own, but letter carriers have to do it while carrying 20-30 lbs. of mail as well.
8. Letter carriers will go on extended leave.
When you walk 15 kilometres a day, every day around the year, the likelihood of a serious injury approaches certainty. Between back injuries, hip and knee damage, slips, trips, falls, and dog attacks, it is all but inevitable that a letter carrier will be off work at some point.
By accumulating sick time, letter carriers can top up their short term disability payments so they continue to receive full pay during an extended leave.
It's also important to note that letter carriers do not get paid out for remaining sick time when they retire. Any time not used up is simply lost.
Canada Post Debate Rife with Misinformation - Raise the Hammer
With Sunday night's Senate approval of the bill ordering locked-out Canada Post employees back to work and mandating a new contract with lower wage increases than the company's final offer, it's worth looking back at the media coverage and public discussion of the labour conflict.
Let's set aside, for a moment, the notion that Canada Post workers are simultaneously so irrelevant they should be chided for attempting to negotiate a good contract, and yet so essential that the government had to intervene to legislate them back to work.
In the public debate over the Canada Post labour dispute, I've been surprised at the sheer volume of misinformation flying around - even from media 'authorities' that are supposed to know better.
The first thing we need to do is squash the false information kicking around in letters to the editor, website comments and even some op-eds and editorials. Following are some important facts everyone should who wants to pontificate should first understand:
1. Canada Post is not taxpayer funded.
That's right: your taxes do not pay for Canada Post employees. The company is 100% funded from its own revenues in lettermail stamps, parcel delivery, direct marketing and so on. The wages and benefits that Canada Post employees are fighting to protect cost you nothing as a taxpayer.
2. Canada Post is a crown corporation.
The Post has not been a department of the government since the Canada Post Corporation Act was implemented in 1981. It operates at arm's length from the government but is subject to federal regulations around service levels, pricing and so on.
3. Canada Post is profitable.
Canada Post has turned a net profit for each of the past fifteen years. For the fiscal year ending in December 2009, the corporation reported a profit of $281 million and paid $38 million in taxes. Profits were up $191 million over the previous year, despite a 5 percent reduction in operational revenue.
4. Canada Post has one of the lowest stamp prices in the industrialized world.
Federal regulations cap lettermail stamp price increases below the rate of inflation, so the real, inflation-adjusted price of a stamp tends to fall over time.
5. Employees do not start at seven weeks vacation.
When an employee is promoted to regular full time, generally after several years as a "casual" part time employee with no guaranteed hours, they get three weeks of vacation. Under the previous contract, employees do not reach seven weeks vacation until they have 28 years of employment.
6. The unionized employees were locked out.
After talks broke down, the union instituted rolling strikes to make a point without stopping mail delivery. It was Canada Post that locked the workers out and completely shut down mail operations.
7. The job is hard.
A lot of commentary in op-eds, letters to the editor and online discussion suggests that letter carriers are "lazy", "overpaid", "uneducated" and so on. However, the job itself is extremely difficult. It isn't the stroll-through-the-neighbourhood sinecure that many people seem to think it is, and it hasn't been for years.
Most routes in the lower city, for example, are around 15 kilometres in length and include hundreds of points of call. If a route has 500 houses and each house has four steps to the mailbox, that's 2,000 stairs up and down.
That much walking would be tiring enough on its own, but letter carriers have to do it while carrying 20-30 lbs. of mail as well.
8. Letter carriers will go on extended leave.
When you walk 15 kilometres a day, every day around the year, the likelihood of a serious injury approaches certainty. Between back injuries, hip and knee damage, slips, trips, falls, and dog attacks, it is all but inevitable that a letter carrier will be off work at some point.
By accumulating sick time, letter carriers can top up their short term disability payments so they continue to receive full pay during an extended leave.
It's also important to note that letter carriers do not get paid out for remaining sick time when they retire. Any time not used up is simply lost.
Canada Post Debate Rife with Misinformation - Raise the Hammer
Noooooooooo more 3 dimensional reality! I'm calling the Arch-Bishop to get an exorcism team assembled.
Last edited:
The burning question I have is what did the postal workers end up getting compared to what they were demanding?
Without any numbers being mentioned that is the gist of what I've been hearing on CBC news, and contrary to what Petros says, it does seem to be about wages. :smile:
Well there's more to it. They wanted pensions, if I'm not mistaken - and like Air Canada - they didn't get them. So, they have to settle for bankable sick/vacation days. However, they have to use all of those days up before they retire, so it's a bit moot.
What really ticks me off is Harper blatantly saying that the conservative party is not favouring either side, when their slated wage rate is a clear and objective metric showing that they favour the corporation. Not only is that draconian, but pretty insulting to all Canadians that expect the government not to take sides without any validation.
And with the three days that they had for negotiations, they could have at least bumped that wage rate to what canada post was offering, but they didn't make any concessions at all. It really makes you wonder what kind of people are at the top, trying to rule with an iron fist.