{"id":2359,"date":"2016-07-08T15:28:12","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T19:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/?p=2359"},"modified":"2024-10-07T17:05:19","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T21:05:19","slug":"support-postal-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/support-postal-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"Support Postal Workers!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Communist Party of Canada today called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to intervene with Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra to restart negotiations and stop the clock on the 72 hour countdown to a lockout initiated by the corporation July 3<sup>rd<\/sup> to take effect at 12:01 am Monday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCanada Post\u2019s Deepak Chopra\u2019s \u201cmy way or the highway\u201d approach to bargaining won\u2019t lead to a collective agreement and will suspend public postal services across Canada, while lining the pockets of Fed-Ex, Purolator, UPS, and other private, for-profit multi-national corporations.\u00a0 These companies are licking their lips at the prospects of a long work stoppage delivered by Pitney Bowes\u2019s ex-boss Deepak Chopra, which begs the question:\u00a0 Whose interests is Chopra working for anyway?\u201d said CPC leader Elizabeth Rowley.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCanada Post\u2019s demands for massive concessions on the defined benefit pension plan, including the introduction of an inferior defined contribution plan for new hires that will eliminate any kind of pension security for the youngest workers, is a declaration of war.\u00a0\u00a0 It will lead to the elimination of defined benefit pensions for all postal workers, likely sooner than later, as workers in the private sector have found out after hard struggles with employers to stop the theft of their DB pensions. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Canada Post is also demanding concessions and roll-backs on wages and working conditions, and is refusing to address pay equity issues which have condemned female-dominated rural and suburban mail carriers to work for almost 30% less than their counterparts in urban mail carriers.\u00a0 Canada Post\u2019s opposition is shameful, and it\u2019s illegal.\u00a0 The government must act:\u00a0 Canada Post and Deepak Chopra are not above the law,\u201d said Rowley.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDeepak Chopra refused to step down when the Liberals asked for his resignation following the ouster of the Harper Tories in 2015.\u00a0 He is continuing with the Tory agenda of driving down wages and pensions, smashing the unions, slashing services, and breaking up the public post office as the prelude to the complete privatization of postal services that is now the norm in the advanced capitalist countries.\u00a0\u00a0 Inaction by the Liberals now would demonstrate support for the Tories\u2019 privatization plans.\u00a0 The government must speak up in defence of the public post office, and of free collective bargaining now.\u00a0\u00a0 The courts have already slammed the Harper government for their shameful and illegal role in the last set of postal negotiations; the Liberals must act now to get negotiations back on track,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Canada Post has conducted a massive disinformation campaign aimed at turning the public against postal workers and their union, CUPW.\u00a0 This disinformation includes the assertions that Canada Post is losing money when in fact it is generating considerable profits every year; and the wild and unsubstantiated statement that the union\u2019s opening offer in bargaining would cost $ 1 billion.\u00a0 At the same time, the corporation also refuses to consider adding new business services to offset the decline in mail volume, preferring instead to use the \u2018create-a-crisis\u2019 strategy honed by the Tories to privatize public services and assets like Canada Post. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the process the corporation clearly hopes to derail the public review of \u00a0Canada Post\u2019s services now underway; a review that will consider adding new services such as postal banking.\u00a0 This is a public service that CUPW states could provide basic financial services for everyone, through its network of 6,000 postal outlets across Canada, including in rural and northern communities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf postal workers are locked out, or forced out on strike, they can count on the active support of the Communist Party of Canada in their struggle for a collective agreement that includes increased wages, defined benefit pensions, pay equity, and expanded public postal services in a public post office,\u201d said Rowley.\u00a0 \u201cThe\u00a0 Communist\u00a0 Party calls on the labour and democratic movements and all those concerned with the preservation of public services and free collective bargaining rights, to support postal workers and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. This is everyone\u2019s fight!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada<\/em><\/p>\n<p>July 8, 2016<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Communist Party of Canada today called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to intervene with Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra to restart negotiations and stop the clock on the 72 hour countdown to a lockout initiated by the corporation July 3rd to take effect at 12:01 am Monday. \u201cCanada Post\u2019s Deepak Chopra\u2019s \u201cmy way or&#8230;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,17,34,36,79,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cpc","category-labour","category-privatization","category-public-services","category-save-canada-post","category-statements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2359"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2362,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359\/revisions\/2362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}