By J.P. Fortin
Most people believe that Canada Post must continue to exist as a public service. But achieving this – in this hostile, deregulated environment – means eroding “impediments” to management rights, namely public service obligations and collective agreements.
This is the conclusion of William Kaplan’s Report of the Industrial Inquiry Commission into labour relations at Canada Post, a conclusion shared enthusiastically by Canada Post on May 15.
In considering this report, it is important to understand its origins. For the past 5 months, postal workers have been working under a return-to-work order under section 107 of the Canada Labour Code. This offensive, completely anti-union ministerial decree is special legislation in disguise which legitimizes Canada Post’s repeated refusal to negotiate. On the question of government intervention, Commissioner Kaplan’s opinion is paradoxical. He says that a strike or lockout situation in which the government does not intervene could be “the only way to achieve the structural changes and compromises necessary for Canada Post’s survival” – but he’s a bit too late!
The report clearly establishes the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) as the guilty party, with its “unrealistic” and “duplicative” demands. It also clearly identifies its champions, in an entire section dedicated to corporate monopolies including US-based Wal-Mart, UPS, FedEx and Amazon, as well as Germany’s DHL. Kaplan states that these leviathans have “almost unlimited access to capital” and are “here to stay” in Canada. He says the competitors of an apparently moribund postal service “are not idle” and describes them with words like “agile,” “innovative,” “modern” and “efficient,” while embracing their desire to pollute the airspace with thousands of drones.
In a barely concealed dig at the union, he also notes that these corporations’ success is obviously due to a major competitive advantage: “lower labour costs.” According to the commissioner, the savage extraction of surplus value from labour is multiplied tenfold by “non-unionized competitors” with employees who “[supply] their vehicles,” are paid on a piece-rate basis, have split shifts, etc.
These are the broad outlines of Kaplan’s portrait of the situation. It’s a neoliberal fantasy, with the inevitable competitive space and the necessary sacrifice of working conditions on the altar of the law of the strongest. Private monopolies, which are slowly strangling the postal service for the benefit of executives and shareholders, are “here to stay.”
But what would happen if these monopolies were instead shown the door, and the public postal service’s mandate were extended to last mile delivery? In such a scenario, door-to-door delivery would be under public control, so retailers would have to go through the public system. Commissioner Kaplan doesn’t consider this option.
Instead, he proposes solutions with uncertain cost-benefit ratios. To be more precise, they are uncertain for the postal service, but very certain for the subcontractors and large private engineering and IT conglomerates, who will be happy to bill Canada Post for the colossal “dynamic routing” project. It would also be interesting to know the opinion of Canada Post’s various customers on the abolition of daily delivery – a measure that the Crown corporation itself does not want.
Kaplan’s “solutions” are mainly aimed at slowing down Canada Post’s decline. But against them, there is an obvious solution for ensure not only the continuity of the postal service, but also its long-term success – to extend the postal service’s mandate to include last mile delivery.
Donald Trump’s trade war has sparked a real resurgence in the desire for popular sovereignty in this country – against this backdrop, wouldn’t it make sense to restrict the influence of foreign monopolies to the benefit of our public postal service? When Commissioner Kaplan writes that these giants “are here to stay,” does he take into consideration that Amazon Logistics left Quebec on an anti-union whim last January, and that 20,000 UPS employees were laid off worldwide last month? These are giants with feet of clay, owned by foreign interests, on which an increasingly important part of our economic infrastructure rests.
As we head toward the return of the labour dispute, on May 22, the labour and people’s struggle to extend and defend the public postal service is not only necessary, but also urgent.
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