Solidarity with CUPW’s fight for jobs and a public postal service

The federal government is working overtime to convince Canadians that Canada Post is a public service we can’t afford. The press and media are constantly repeating the claim that postal services operate at a loss of $10 million every day, and that the Canadian Union of Postal Workers is somehow responsible.

In fact, Canada Post is a publicly owned corporation— a public service owned by the people of Canada— which takes its direction from the Liberal and Conservative federal governments that have run the country since Confederation. These governments have worked hard to cut postal services, along with funding for universal healthcare, education, EI, pensions, and other vital public services and social programs that working people and the labour movement in Canada fought hard to get – and to keep. These were meant to provide vital services to the public across the country. They were never intended to generate corporate profits like US healthcare corporations do, and like Purolator, Amazon, FedEx and others do.

Purolator made pre-tax profits of $294 million last year, which are never counted as income by Canada Post, even though Canada Post owns 91% of Purolator, and has surrendered almost all of its very lucrative parcel delivery business to this private, for-profit corporation, and to Amazon and the other mainly US companies amassing huge profits at public expense.

In the drive to privatize public services like Canada Post, Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper raised the price of mail and began cutting door-to-door mail delivery in 2013, which cost his party public support and votes in the 2015 election. They left privatization to the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, who appointed Mark Carney, a transnational banker and advocate for corporate profits and privatization around the globe.

Instead of expanding Canada Post’s services to the public, the government is cutting those services with a proposed 24% cut to federal social spending in the November 4th federal budget. The Liberal budget could have, and should have, invested in postal services by nationalizing Purolator and by ensuring that Canada Post has a monopoly on package delivery in Canada. The government could be adopting proposals such as postal banking which has broad support and is a service currently provided by postal services in France, Italy, Japan and New Zealand.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has proposed postal banking and other new services that would be welcomed by the public in all parts of the country. The union has also advocated strongly to restore door-to-door mail delivery across the country, restoring an important service that has broad public support and that will keep more than 20,000 letter carriers working.
The truth is that CUPW and the trade union movement are working hard to expand the services that Canada Post provides to the public in every part of the country, while the Liberals and the Conservatives are working hard to eliminate the public services that Canada Post provides, to eliminate the jobs and wages of more than 20,000 public sector workers, and to hand this work over to private, for-profit corporations.

As the November 4th federal budget will show, the Liberals and Tories actually share the agenda of 24% cuts to public services like the post office and universal social programs like Medicare, EI, public pensions, and more. Denmark has already raised the pension age to 70 effective next year, and other European countries are following suit. Prime Minister Harper raised it and later lowered it a decade ago—will the current government raise it now? Cutting public services and social programs is intended to free up funds of $150 billion annually that can be redirected to military spending, repression, and war. This is catastrophic for the services that will be lost and for the drive to war that it endorses.

This is an agenda that has the support of the corporations and the wealthy in Canada, and also of President Trump and the corporations and wealthy that he represents. The layoffs and the misery that are coming as a result of these policies need to be opposed and defeated by a broad coalition of labour and democratic forces who will advocate and fight for a people’s agenda of peace, public services, wages and jobs.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers is on the front line of the struggle today, and the government and the Tory opposition aim to break the strike, break the union, and privatize Canada Post – an essential public service.

Working people, their unions and democratic organizations need to show their support for the strikers and for the essential service—and jobs—that they are fighting for. This is the first cross-Canada fight for a universal public service under attack. It won’t be the last.

United action can win! United action is decisive now!

The Communist Party of Canada stands in solidarity and support of CUPW and its fighting members across the country and calls on the labour and democratic movements to speak up against cuts and for the expanded services proposed by CUPW that the public wants and Canada needs.

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada