Just six months after the bitterly anti-labour Conservative government was driven out of office by voters, the corporate attack on the unionized public mail delivery system has not stopped. As negotiations heat up between Canada Post and the crown corporation, this convention of the Communist Party of Canada extends warm greetings of solidarity to the 50,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
Over the past two years, our Party has been active in the campaign across the country to save jobs and services at Canada Post, especially against the expansion of superboxes into urban areas, a move which would end urban home delivery and cost up to 8,000 union jobs. This spring and summer, CUPW is in a battle to defeat management’s concession demands, and to win a strong collective agreement, including equality for rural and suburban mail carriers (RSMCs, more full-time permanent jobs, protection of sick days, and decent pensions. In the event of job action at Canada Post, which could happen by early July, the members of the Communist Party will stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers from CUPW on the picket lines. We also affirm our support for CUPW’s campaign to demand that the federal government and the Corporation expand the range of services, such as postal banking at Canada Post outlets, rather than slash more jobs.
We will also continue to help expose the lies used by Canada Post and right-wing thinktanks to justify the elimination of home postal delivery and to escalate postal rates. The Conference Board of Canada, which includes Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra, continues to predict massive future losses, despite the fact that in 2014 Canada Post reported profits of $62 million, followed by $99 million in 2015.
In reality, these moves are a key element of the agenda of privatization which targets all social services, publicly owned resources, energy, Medicare, education and transportation. In order to expedite negotiation and implementation of the CETA agreement with the European Union, the former federal government made a commitment to comply with the conditions of the Lisbon Agreement (the de facto constitution of the EU) which calls for the privatization of public services. Canada has gone even further than other countries in the drive to ultimately replace Canada Post with private for-profit delivery and postal services. Since then, the new Liberal government has signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, yet another corporate pact to expand the ability of investors to extract profits from public services.
The Communist Party of Canada urges the entire labour movement and its community allies to stand in full solidarity with CUPW’s fight for a strong collective agreement, and to build a powerful mass mobilization against the entire right-wing agenda, starting with a campaign to defeat CETA, the TPP and other corporate deals which threaten public services, democracy and sovereignty.
