Rural Canadians should start bracing for a possible postal strike which could disrupt the mail as early as mid-October, say rural spokespeople.
Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are negotiating but remain far apart.
“It would be a major disruption,” Keystone Agricultural Producers president Les Jacobson said Monday from his Arborg, Man. farm. “It is a vital link to the rest of the world for many rural Canadians. We tend to look at it as an essential service.”
Leroy Kuan, president of the Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association, said rural post offices would remain open in the event of a CUPW strike, but there would be little mail to deliver. “If they asked my members to do CUPW work, we would object.”
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The prospect of a strike has many businesses from mail order outlets to rural newspapers already thinking about alternate service or loss of business.
But Western Producer publisher Allan Laughland said organizing an alternative delivery system in 1997 would be far more complicated than it was during strikes in the 1970s when newspapers were delivered through country elevators.
Not an option
“For us, it would be a monumental task to set up an alternative delivery system and I don’t think it would work through elevators,” he said. “There are fewer elevators and I don’t think people congregate around elevators as much as they used to. I don’t consider that to be a viable option.”
Rural politicians like Ontario Liberal Murray Calder and British Columbia Reformer Jim Gouk say a postal service disruption would be a problem for many of their constituents.
“Small business is the one that really gets hit hard with a lack of mail, but lots of people in rural areas depend on the mails for their parcels, their letters,” said Gouk, MP for the West Kootenay-Okanagan constituency and Reform post office critic.
Calder, a southwestern Ontario Liberal and a candidate to head the House of Commons agriculture committee, said many rural people have access to the internet, fax technology or other ways to communicate.
“So I don’t think it will be as devastating as maybe it was in the past but still, not everyone has access to new technology and as a politician, I’m sure I’ll be hearing a lot about it from my constituents,” he said.
Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers were still negotiating Sept. 15.
However, a mediator already has tried and failed to bridge the gap between the two sides and is expected to give the government that message in a report within a week or two. After that, the government must decide whether to order talks to continue or to allow a strike or lockout.
CUPW has been without a contract since July 31. It is asking for more permanent job creation to replace growing amounts of overtime, part-time and contract work.
The union also is asking for an 8.6 percent wage increase over 18 months.
But if talks do break down and a strike is called, the union says it has evidence that the government already has promised the Canadian Direct Marketing Association it will legislate the workers back to the job within days.
CUPW president Darrell Tingley last week accused the Liberals of sabotaging the negotiations by giving the post office a signal that it will quickly intervene against the workers if a strike starts.
“Why would Canada Post negotiate an agreement when it knows the government is poised to intervene?”
The government insisted it was not trying to undermine negotiations.
