Since when has a union ever cared about that? I'm not even sure if viability is part of their mandate. Their job is to extort as much as possible from both sides.
Canada Post - Huge losses
- Thread starter raginduck
- Start date
The only thing they can have in mind is a bailout or similar from the government. Even if the union's expansion ideas were viable... CP would run out of money long before they could implemented.. never mind turning a profit.
2x rate for weekends is a non-starter, completely ridiculous and detached from reality. Many other employers pay a shift premium for weekends but it is on the order of 5% not 50-100%. If crazy ideas like that aren't cut completely, CP is doomed, the only real question is when.
If the union gets what it wants the members may see the dead cat bounce with their incomes.
Greater minds than mine might come up with something but aside from a federal cash influx CP is doomed.
Correct me if I'm wrong but a bankrupt corporation doesn't have money for severances or retraining. Seniority is lost.
An agreed upon restructuring could have CP do a couple of times a week Super mail box deliveries while partnering with Purolator to do parcels. Some CP employees keep their jobs. Rural costs might be higher but you don't have to pay a million for a shack.
If I relied on CP for income, I would have been prioritizing a war chest for the last few years. There are few outcomes where this ends up well for the majority of employees over a long period of time. A friend of a friend is a supervisor (or something similar) at a depot. He has a $2M+ house and all his kids go to private school at ~$5K/mo. That's a scary house of cards that's not painless to unravel if things change substantially.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
They appear to have no path to becoming profitable under the current labour arrangement, any new deal with increased wages and the size of the workforce would make profitability even less likely.
Bankruptcy could provide a fresh start but would come with immediate social and economic costs. Nationalization with a bailout would ensure public service continuity but could leave taxpayers on the hook for potential inefficiencies. Privatization might lead to a leaner, more efficient system but could result in higher costs and reduced service in less profitable areas.
A balanced approach might involve a combination of reforms: modernizing the service to cut unnecessary costs, adjusting labour and pension obligations, increasing the use of private contractors, and rightsizing services by region (urban and rural) while ensuring that essential services remain available to remote and rural communities.
Options 1, 3 and 4 likely all require a bomb within cupw. Option 2 continues the budget will balance itself in perpetuity.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
Sometimes a bomb is the only solution. Remember these bankruptcies?
Eatons 1999 - 70,000 employees
Air Canada 2003 - 42,000 employees
Nortel 2009 - 94,000 employees - and remember, at it's peak Nortel was 33% of the total TSE (TSX) value.
We survived.
I was holding to buy nortel at 40. Thankfully, I never got the chance.
BigEvilDoer
Well-known member
Note that earlier this thread I commented that in a city the size of Guelph, we have LOST 25 routes in the past 20 years.
***There is a pre-defined “Iron Ring” around certain city boundaries for every city. Anything built outside of the Ring counts to a different area of delivery (RSMC). All new properties built will go to RSMC, as they are outside the Ring.
25 Routes inside of the Ring have been eliminated. When you consider that, it’s not surprising that we walk 24-35km a day
So, your buddy who made it home by noon probably had about 350 addresses or points of call to deliver to.
The average foot walk nowadays is between 700 (extremely physical route with houses well away from streets) to 1100 if you have some big apartments.
So yes, things have drastically changed.
BigEvilDoer
Well-known member
Alright. Back up the bus.
We are *NOT* asking 2x pay.
Union wants to avoid the “Gig” system - contract workers with no guaranteed hours, no benefits and at a $18/hour wage.
They want to avoid the “2 Tier” (actually, it’s already 7 tier wages depending on seniority) disparity. We do not want “Gig” workers. We want employees that are properly taken care of with hours etc.
Last I heard, we were considering weekend delivery positions to fully hired (part/full) workers if they so wished to do so, at regular wage.
Myself, I think the best option is to utilize the massive number of “Casuals” that only get called when needed. It’s hard to live on that system. Some weeks you’re on full time, most you’re between 0-20 hours. Can’t expect people to live on that. CP cries that they don’t understand why so many casuals quit before being hired. It’s because they can’t live on the low, fluxuating wages.
Give the Casuals some guaranteed hours. They’ll stop the loss of employees and fix the weekend delivery problem.
The "gig" drivers.. get paid as independent contractors and are paid piece work.
If the actual cost of sending a letter or bill is five bucks , charge five bucks . CP going bankrupt won’t be good for them , us, or anyone in the middle . They needed a drastic reboot ten yrs ago , they may have left it too long .
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Restructuring would do the least harm but eliminating 10,000 positions would cost hundreds of millions in severances. The transition will be painful.
The question comes up "Who would do the restructuring?" CP didn't get where it is by being run by geniuses.
The union would be smaller and broken up between letters and parcels. They won't like that.
Grade six math makes it clear that CP can't go on in the same manner without billions of federal dollars in gifts. The posties need more money and the union may be assuming the feds will slip a couple of billion under the table.
The end result will be less convenient mail delivery at a higher cost and XX,XXX laid off.
If a company goes bankrupt another company can buy it from the receivers but they only buy the assets, not the debts or obligations (Severances being a big one).
What physical assets does CP actually own? Land, buildings, furnishings, equipment, vehicles etc
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Mad Mike
Well-known member
The world around CPC is changing, I'm not convinced CUPW believes it needs to be competitive to survive.
Tiered wages are not uncommon.
There's nothing wrong with Gig work, or Gig workers. Utilizing gig workers to meet the elastic needs of delivery services seems like a win-win, CPC gets an affordable, elastic workforce, and Gig workers get the flexibility to work where and when they want. It's working at Amazon, Uber, Skip, Instacart, FedEx, DHL... why not CPC?
In workforce scheduling, the only way to up the casual work hours to a guaranteed level is to reduce the full-time workforce. I'm pretty sure CPC will agree to that.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
I think that's what the Unions want -- charge more, pay more. Problem is that's not a sustainable model -- it's what they have been doing and it's sinking the ship.
If I were calling the shots, I'd seriously consider using bankruptcy to right the cart.
Jettison the labor & pension issues, then reorganize the business. Franchise all retail post offices. Outsource remote and rural delivery to contractors. Change over the remaining residential mail stops to Supermailboxes. Add weekend package services.
As for using gig workers and flex. Canada Post delivers government documents, etc. are there any hurdles giving this to fly by night gig-workers? Regular couriers I could see being fine, but wildwest gig-workers???
Maybe a non-issue or at least something that needs to be worked out.
Maybe a non-issue or at least something that needs to be worked out.
Yes, you need criminal background checks/fingerprint id, etc to work at CP.
I would hope that tracking for important documents is in place even for normal posties. Bob signs out 10 passports to be delivered as part of their run today. Two people say they didn't receive them and Bob didn't sign them back in, there needs to be a meeting asap. Same process would work for gig worker. You can steal/lose important things once but it can't be a pattern.
