President's Message May 2013
Canada Post Announces Profits for 2012
Management was telling the Local last December 2012 that Canada Post was losing money to the tune of $85 million and used this as their rationale to cut clerk jobs at the Hamilton Mail Processing Plant (HMPP) and move the Hamilton & London/Windsor draw to Toronto. The same argument was being made to accept the Urban and Rural tentative agreements. Now we know Canada Post made $127 million profit last year. We are falsely being told the Corporation was profitable because the Urban & Rural were ratified in spite of neither contract coming into force until January 1, 2013. The federal Conservatives are pushing the country back into recession and cannot balance its budget so they are going after worker wages and working conditions to do it. Do not expect accurate projections from Canada Post for the next few years because the government's anti-worker and anti-union agenda.
Burlington Main and Depot 8 Restructure Implementation
Both the Main and the Depot letter carrier restructures were implemented the week of April 15. In spite of raising objections at the Union/Management consultations about the number of bundle boxes being removed from the routes management went ahead any way. Not surprisingly there has been problems at both depots with over weight bundle bags. Union Representatives on the Health & Safety Committees demanded the employer address the problem and management agreed to weigh the problem routes over a 10 day period. A number of routes will be getting a bundle box back but there is a problem with some routes only getting a box moved. The Union does not agree to this and this was not the commitment we were given in consultation. The Union is pushing Canada Post to review each route to correct the over weight bundle drop problem.
VES at the HMPP
The Union received notice of the VES work being done at the HMPP is going to be moved to Toronto in September 2013. Regardless of the fact that VES is electronic and moving it to another city serves only to justify job cuts. This is a major blow to the plant workers especially those with disabilities. It is obvious Canada Post is playing a shell game across the country of moving work around in order to cut jobs and create an unbearable work environment. They cannot get rid of us fast enough. Their goal is to force senior and disabled employees to quit and then higher new workers at the lower wage levels.
Federal Government Budget Bill Attacks Collective Bargaining
A common tactic of the corporate elite is to get their puppets to hide unconstitutional changes to laws in unrelated pieces of legislation hoping people won't notice. The latest is the Conservatives attacks on workers and collective bargaining at Crown Corporations. They intend to give more power to the Treasury Board Secretariat during negotiations to over ride collective bargaining. Citizens in Canada under our constitution have the right to free collective bargaining but the obscenely rich in our society, and their Conservative stooges, do not agree. They are loyal to the multinational corporations who put profit before people. Until the Conservatives are voted out there is no point in trying to bargain.
Conservatives also announced more cuts to public service in spite of the harm it is doing to the economy. Many communities across the country, especially small communities, rely on government jobs as one of the anchors to a local economy. Ideology is driving government decisions not sound business sense. The Conservatives deep hatred for the working classes and the Unions that represent them is becoming more obvious with every law they pass. They could save billions by closing loop holes for offshore tax havens or if they reversed the unfair tax cuts they've been giving corporations that refuse to create jobs in Canada.
Members keep asking when are the government and Canada Post going to stop the hacking and slashing? They will not stop until they push the economy into recession after recession in order to continue their attacks on workers wages and benefits. They will stop when Canadians have had enough of their abuse and waste, of the billion dollar G-20 boondoggle, of the billions of dollars of cost over runs for the F-35 jet plane, of the endless Conservative senate appointee scandals. They will stop when Canadians finally wake up and say enough is enough and vote them out of office.
In solidarity,
Mark Platt
President,
Hamilton Local 548