Canadians are now planning for the holidays, they are figuring out how to get the best deals on a particularly tight budget for all the Christmas gifts they have to buy, and making lists for Black Friday…but that’s just a waste of time because Canada Post is on strike, again.
If Canadians thought the Crown corporation would help them out by simply delivering the parcels they need as they start ordering gifts for the holidays, well, they should know better because Canada Post workers have done this before: go on strike just when it will hurt Canadians the most.
Not to mention small business owners who will likely make their best sales at this time of the year, only they can no longer charge $2 for shipping, they’ll have to charge $20. And we know how customers love to pay ten times the price for shipping! According to the Globe and Mail, “small businesses, which tend to be dependent on Canada Post because it is a cheaper option for parcel delivery, have warned that a prolonged strike could devastate them financially and could lead to higher costs for consumers.” Yes, devastate. In an economy where Canadians are struggling to get by and small businesses have pressure on them from all sides, enter Canada Post to make life more difficult.
While Canada Post has sometimes conducted rotating strikes, this time it’s all or nothing, they are taking it nationwide. This move will seriously disrupt the mail system across the country, and it will take a long while until it’s fixed even after the strike is over. They want pay increases and more defenses against competition from technological advancement and rivals like Amazon. The union is “asking for a compounded wage increase of 24 per cent spread over four years, while Canada Post has proposed a 11.5-per-cent wage increase over four years.”
Jan Simpson, a representative for the union, has said that competition with places like Amazon that have same-day delivery has led to “tougher work conditions” for her workers. Of course, competition is something the small business owners who will be devastated by this strike always have to contend with. If only they could send their parcels so they could maybe survive.
55,000 workers aren’t going to work today, and likely won’t for a while. The last time this happened was in 2018, and it was also before the holidays. It took them one month to get back to work, and that was on a rotating strike. Something similar this time around during a federal strike is going to likely cripple the Canada Post corporation and seriously hurt the livelihoods of small business owners. While we wait for the government to most likely intervene with back-to work-legislation, it might be smart to take a good look at this postal system that decides to strike just when it’s hardest for Canadians, with no compassion to struggling Canadian families or small businesses trying to survive.
Economist Vincent Geloso argued recently that it might be time to privatize Canada Post, and there’s precedent. He gives examples found in Europe where, due to an EU directive, “all letters regardless of weight have been open to competition since 2013. The directive does not mandate the privatization of state-owned postal companies; it simply ends postal monopolies.” Additionally, Geloso says that countries like the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany completely privatized their postal system. In both examples, prices for stamps and other services fell, and has forced postal organizations to find better solutions because they can no longer turn to taxpayers for a bailout.
Do we really need a national postal monopoly that holds Canadians hostage every few years, or do we start agreeing with the union that their (privately owned) competition might just do things better? According to Geloso, it might be time for Canadians and its small businesses to start seriously considering privatization before the next strike comes right before a future holiday season. Consumers shouldn’t be held hostage by their own postal system any longer.
