Striking postal workers trying to hold Christmas mail hostage deserve pink slips
Remembrance Day was barely gone for another year when shopkeepers were putting up their Christmas decorations, toy companies were advertising their latest over-hyped plastic creations and Canada Post employees were trying to take the nation’s mail service hostage again, just in time for Christmas.
About 2,400 inside postal workers went on strike after contract negotiations fell apart last week.
It’s kind of hard to feel sympathy for government employees who are already making great money and getting great benefits trying to squeeze more from our collective pockets while using our Christmas mail as leverage.
What’s worse is it’s far from the first time these postal workers have played their “gimme more” game just before Christmas.
They know this is the time of year when Canadians depend on the postal service the most. When grandmas in Saint John, New Brunswick and St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador mail Christmas sweaters to grandchildren in Chatham, Ontario and Chatham, New Brunswick. When Christmas cookies crisscross the continent in cardboard care packages, and Christmas cards join an ocean of mail moving all over the world.
But instead of doing the job they are paid so well to do, these strikers are determined to disrupt mail delivery over Christmas until they gain what they want.
"We are definitely trying to delay the mail," Lori Charbonneau, strike captain for the eight striking workers at the Windsor Mail Processing Plant on Walker Road, told reporters last week. "Canada Post keeps trying to tell the public that, 'Don't worry, the mail is going to be delivered.'”
But not if the strikers get their way.
Charbonneau, who works in the file room at the Windsor plant, said things are only going to get worse as Christmas mail piles up.
The main roadblock to negotiations is Canada Post's proposal to reduce the number of possible sick days a year from over two weeks to seven days, and to prevent workers from banking them from year to year as they do now. Charbonneau said Canada Post expects employees to apply for unemployment insurance if they are off sick more than a week a year, which she said would burden taxpayers.
And while we’re on the topic of burdening taxpayers, Canadian Community Newspapers’ Association scribe Drew Halfnight wrote last week, “If our public postal service can deliver the mail just fine at the busiest time of year with 2,400 fewer staff, why aren’t they trimming the fat?”
Here, here.
Each and every one of those strikers deserves a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking … and a pink slip.
That’ll take some of the burden off the taxpayers, eh? Let them get an $8 an hour job at their local Value Mart, then they’ll see how good they had things.
About 2,400 inside postal workers went on strike after contract negotiations fell apart last week.
It’s kind of hard to feel sympathy for government employees who are already making great money and getting great benefits trying to squeeze more from our collective pockets while using our Christmas mail as leverage.
What’s worse is it’s far from the first time these postal workers have played their “gimme more” game just before Christmas.
They know this is the time of year when Canadians depend on the postal service the most. When grandmas in Saint John, New Brunswick and St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador mail Christmas sweaters to grandchildren in Chatham, Ontario and Chatham, New Brunswick. When Christmas cookies crisscross the continent in cardboard care packages, and Christmas cards join an ocean of mail moving all over the world.
But instead of doing the job they are paid so well to do, these strikers are determined to disrupt mail delivery over Christmas until they gain what they want.
"We are definitely trying to delay the mail," Lori Charbonneau, strike captain for the eight striking workers at the Windsor Mail Processing Plant on Walker Road, told reporters last week. "Canada Post keeps trying to tell the public that, 'Don't worry, the mail is going to be delivered.'”
But not if the strikers get their way.
Charbonneau, who works in the file room at the Windsor plant, said things are only going to get worse as Christmas mail piles up.
The main roadblock to negotiations is Canada Post's proposal to reduce the number of possible sick days a year from over two weeks to seven days, and to prevent workers from banking them from year to year as they do now. Charbonneau said Canada Post expects employees to apply for unemployment insurance if they are off sick more than a week a year, which she said would burden taxpayers.
And while we’re on the topic of burdening taxpayers, Canadian Community Newspapers’ Association scribe Drew Halfnight wrote last week, “If our public postal service can deliver the mail just fine at the busiest time of year with 2,400 fewer staff, why aren’t they trimming the fat?”
Here, here.
Each and every one of those strikers deserves a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking … and a pink slip.
That’ll take some of the burden off the taxpayers, eh? Let them get an $8 an hour job at their local Value Mart, then they’ll see how good they had things.
posted by Street Wise Guy | 7:14 AM
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