Canada Post on Strike!

The recent strike of postal workers in Canada has once again exposed the weaknesses of the present capitalist situation. Logistics, including shipping, warehousing, distribution, and computer systems, is vital in an economy dominated by offshore manufacturing and mail‑order businesses. The month‑long Canada Post strike had such a devastating effect on capital’s ability to move product that the state stepped in to break it. This acknowledgment of workers’ power by the bourgeois state should receive the attention of communists everywhere.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), with a membership of 50,000, has been in contract negotiations with Canada Post, the state‑owned mail service corporation, since last winter. The negotiations have centered on the significant rise in parcels mailed over the past several years (20 percent between 2016 and 2017 alone), which has drastically increased the workload for postal employees. This has led Canada Post to hire more temporary workers (23.98% of employees and 29.97% of hours in 2017) and to impose mandatory overtime on permanent staff. Overwork has led to an increase in work‑related injuries among postal workers. According to the CUPW, “one out of every 12 workers at Canada Post experienced a disabling injury in 2017”.

With no contract after ten months of negotiations, the CUPW began rotating strikes on October 22. Workers walked out in different major cities on different days over the course of the following month. Though it stopped short of a complete shutdown, the effects of the strike were dramatic. By mid‑November, there were 260 semi‑trailers of undelivered mail at the Toronto processing plant, and over 100 in Vancouver. Canada Post was forced to reject international shipments, and Canada‑bound mail piled up in foreign airports. Slowdowns on days when strikes were not occurring in the different cities prevented the postal service from recovering.

Bleating from capital and its government began immediately, and by the middle of November had reached a feverish intensity. On the first day of the action, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business declared, in biblical terms, that “every time [postal workers] even threaten a strike, more small business customers move to use alternatives, many never returning to Canada post”. The message was clear: form a corporate connection with the bosses or become obsolete. eBay, the middleman for independent sellers who rely on primarily the postal service for shipping, publicly called for the government to ban the strike. Canada Post, in the official press release coinciding with its final contract offer on November 14, warned of “significant impacts to the Canadian retail economy,” and, on top of this, that “charities and not‑for‑profits still use the mail for major fundraising activities”.

The strike’s timing was key to this very welcome disruption. The CUPW announced it on October 16, the day before cannabis was to become legal in Canada. Cannabis sellers, including the state‑run Ontario Cannabis Store, received tens of thousands of mail orders which they could not fulfill, damping the introduction of what is expected to be an economic boom for the country. The strike heated up precisely when businesses and the shipping industry were preparing for the Christmas shopping season.

Under this tremendous pressure from businesses, the Canadian government took action. After Canada Post’s November 14 offer was rejected by the union, Bill C‑89 was read before parliament. It became law on November 26. The strike was officially banned effective the following day, with severe penalties for the union and any union members if they were to continue the action. Rank‑and‑file members could face summary judgements of up to $1,000 per day, union officers $50,000 per day, and the organization $100,000 per day of non‑compliance. Non‑compliance could be construed in nearly any way the government wished. While it maintained the pretense of forcing both the CUPW and Canada Post to comply, the real target was clearly the union. The CUPW called off the strike, while issuing an appeal for protest from the public and other trade unions. Protests occurred at postal facilities across the country, some of which interfered with mail processing.

The Canadian postal strike demonstrates clearly how much impact a relatively mild labor action can have on the economy if it takes place in a vital industry. One can only speculate as to what effects a complete stoppage would have created, and what this would have done for the postal workers’ position. Large parts of the global economy are vulnerable if the workers who connect them take action in their own interests. Logistics workers in Italy, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Germany, among others, have realized this fact and taken action, as we have reported in the past. The bourgeoisie and its governments in every country cannot fail to take notice as well.

The unfortunate lesson of the strike is that wider class support came too late to be meaningful. While effective where implemented, solidarity pickets from members of other unions did not become widespread until after the Canada Post strike had been banned. Unfortunately that was a far cry from solidarity actions across the shipping industry in other countries. This points to a weakness of the CUPW and other unions in its position, namely, that it represents workers of only one firm. By contrast, capital has access to a variety of firms for its every need. Amazon.com, for example, ships through government postal services, commercial parcel carriers, and its own delivery network. Only workers’ unity across and between industries can effectively confront capital on this scale.