Postal workers in Canada are set to strike on Friday, May 23, for the second time in just five months. With the post office coming under the pressures of the capitalist market, CUPW (the postal workers union) stands at a crossroads: capitulate or fight. But how can we win?
How did we get here?
The postal workers are one of the most militant sections of the Canadian working class. Throughout the 1960 and 70s, major battles were fought and won—most notably, collective bargaining rights were won for public sector workers as well as maternity leave. However, as capitalism entered decline after the postwar boom, postal workers faced increasing pressure.
Every negotiating period, management pushed for cuts to benefits, working hours, pensions, etc. And whenever postal workers used their democratic right to strike the government of the bosses would take the right away. This has happened every time since 1981, making the right to strike not worth the paper it’s written on.
More recently pressures on the postal workers have increased as the pressures of the capitalist market—principally the competition from companies like Amazon—has led to a crisis in the post office. This led to deadlocked negotiations and a month-long strike last fall.
The violation of the right to strike reached new heights when Trudeau’s Labour Minister ordered an end to the strike using an obscure clause (Section 107) in the Canada Labour Code. This meant that they took away the right to strike without a vote or a debate in the parliament!
To add insult to injury, they used another obscure clause (Section 108) to order a special Industrial Inquiry Commission headed by William Kaplan to investigate the state of the post office and come up with so-called “solutions.” Following the period in which the commission looked into the situation, postal workers were deprived of their right to strike until May 23.
The Industrial Inquiry Commission
As we explained at the time “the IIC will do the dirty work of ‘reviewing’ Canada Post’s structure ‘from both a customer and an industrial point of view’. Nothing good will come of this for workers.” And this is exactly what happened.
In Kaplan’s report released May 15, not only did he agree with management’s demands to bring in part-time workers and Amazon-style dynamic scheduling, but he also recommended ending daily door-to-door mail delivery and closing rural and suburban mail depots.
In response, postal workers have been rightly angry. Facing mass pressure from the ranks, on Monday, May 19, the CUPW leadership published a statement critical of the offer and issued a strike notice for 12:01am May 23.
Like clockwork, management tabled a new offer on May 21. To entice workers, cuts to pensions and benefits were removed, but all other cuts have remained.
In response, the CUPW leadership asked for a two-week extension to consider the offer. But management, smelling blood, rejected this extension.
Everything is now barrelling towards a strike.
The need for a fighting leadership
It must be noted that the CUPW leadership has, at the most critical moments, vacillated, tried to conciliate and therefore placed the postal workers in a weaker position. CUPW President Jan Simpson’s primary strategy appears to be more negotiations at the bargaining table.
But as Kaplan’s report made it clear, after 18 months of negotiations, it is unlikely for further progress to be made on that front. And management does not seem remotely interested in negotiations either. They know that they have a virtual guarantee that the government will come down on their side and take away the right to strike.
The union tops have not seriously mobilized the members or even given them the right to decide the course of the struggle. For example, the strike notice given this week was done without any rank-and-file discussion or vote. Therefore, unsurprisingly, there is an element of demoralization among the ranks who feel as though they are being treated like bargaining chips—tossed on the table and then taken off, without a say in the matter.
The union leadership has also done almost nothing to prepare the ranks for strike action. It has become quite clear that the leadership is shying away from a serious fight and doing everything in their power to try to reach a compromise. But in this situation, no compromise is possible. Only a militant struggle mobilizing all of the 55,000 postal workers, including the wider labour movement can hope to win this struggle.
The shame is that this could have already been settled in the fall. After being out for a month, at Canada Post’s most profitable time of the year, conditions were ripe to defy the government’s back-to-work order. Trudeau’s minority government was ready to fall and was only maintained with support from the NDP.
If CUPW had defied this anti-democratic order, it could have set into motion an entirely different course of events. Trudeau was doing everything to save his own skin and make sure his government would not be brought down. And defying the back-to-work order was not out of the realm of possibilities. At the time, several CUPW locals voted to defy and more were ready to join them.
But the national leadership buckled and then actively smothered any attempts of locals to defy the anti-democratic government order. This directly led to the situation today where the union is in a far weaker position.
We have to be honest—the defeat in this battle is still hanging over the heads of many postal workers today. But the war is not yet lost, and too much is at stake to throw in the towel.
CUPW more than ever needs a fighting leadership—a leadership that is prepared to carry the struggle through to the end, including defying any attempts to make workers take down their picket lines, or to force a contract vote on the employers’ terms.
If CUPW workers are going to stand a chance, this can only be settled on the picket lines.
The struggle to save Canada Post is a struggle against capitalism
But this struggle is about more than just the working conditions of the postal workers or the future of Canada Post.
With capitalism descending into crisis, the Canadian social democratic model is under threat. Social programs will be on the chopping block and crown corporations will be in the sights of private capitalists who see a profitable field of investment.
We cannot simply stick our heads in the sand as the current leadership is doing and claim that there is no crisis. The fact of the matter is that public services like Canada Post cannot maintain themselves within the hostile capitalist market. Essentially, this resolves into an identity crisis— is the post office a public service, like health care or education, or is it a business competing with capitalists in the private sector?
Management’s Amazonification agenda represents an attempt to resolve this contradiction by moving decisively away from the service model and towards the business model.
Rather than merely defend the status quo and try to go back to the good ol’ days, we must fight against the encroachment of the capitalist system with a bold socialist solution. Management points to the fact that Canada Post has run an increasing deficit every year since 2017. But these are small deficits compared with the tens of billions showered on corporate Canada every single year.
We must completely reject the capitalist logic which finds it perfectly acceptable to dump massive sacks of cash on failing corporations but cannot allow a small deficit for a social service we all use.
This assault on the post office is merely the opening salvo in this class war. If the Liberals are not stopped here, then health care and education will be the next target. In this sense, CUPW workers are fighting on behalf of all workers, and all workers have an interest in joining their fight.
The CUPW Communists of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) have been on the front lines of this struggle from day one. The RCP has also been mobilizing its members from coast to coast to support CUPW picket lines. Our perspective is that to win this struggle and any future ones, the union must return to its revolutionary roots as an unapologetically militant force willing and capable to go to any lengths to win.
We hope you will join us in that fight.
