If your mailbox is ½" from your front door you can.
Canada Post - Huge losses
- Thread starter raginduck
- Start date
If your mailbox is ½" from your front door you can.
Fair enough. The people that need to walk a few hundred feet will freak out. The world will go on.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
Ok, you have a couple of points.
1. Bargaining in good faith. Isn’t that a 2 way street? I highly doubt the last renewal/extension was an olive branch delivered from the union by a dove.
2. Raise. I don’t think that’s an entitlement. A company expects a workforce, unionized or not, to meet productivity goals. CPC union productivity is 50% of what it was when the last deal was signed. And considerably less as productive than UPS, FEdEX and Amazon. Do you limit pay to match productivity or cut the workforce to match?
3. Striking at Christmas. Perhaps a miscalculation. I’m not seeing a lot of people worries or sympathetic. Canada Post isn’t that critical these days, the carriers who have been eroding their biz for the last 10 years have easily absorbed their holiday season volume.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
It not a bad idea if it’s specialized and uses existing workforce and infrastructure. Lots of rural Canada has a post office, but not a bank.
Basic cash day to day banking services are easy to deliver and could benefit local communities and CPC.
I’d say no to full on competition as a bank, stick to consumer and small business bank accounts, cash Services and lending in markets not served by established banks.
It sounds like CP picked the date (though I wouldn't be surprised if union threatened).
Timeline;
Union gave notice they were in a strike position
CP gave notice they were in a lockout position
CP gave notice that the employee contract (that both sides agreed to continue and 'negotiate' for the last year+) would end on Friday at 8am
Union gave notice strike would start at Friday 12.01am
This entire process reeks of 'who blinks first'. I think both sides should get boxed around the ears.
I was sad comments were turned off on that video. I was looking forward to seeing them.
You had me right up until I saw the CBC "News" logo in the top left corner.
They don't have the backbone to leave the comments turned on on any of their videos.
Do the math. How does a corporation stay in business when it spends more than it makes?
According to the video CP will be broke by next spring. No paychecks = no workers = no customers = business gone to other companies. Restarting can be more costly than continuation.
Sorry for the employees of CP, many of which are hard working, but one has to keep an eye on one's employer and know when to bail out if the venture isn't sustainable. If you're not swimming distance to shore, you guessed wrong.
Maybe some employees will be lucky but with CP a lottery ticket could be a better bet. Unless they can dump the incompetent managers.
sburns
Well-known member
Situation doesn't look good for CP. I don't think the workers are asking for too much, but if CP isn't financially healthy then how does this end. Deeper in the hole? They really need to figure out how to win customers back. But I don't see how well they can do that with the perception of them not working during the busiest time of the year, and CP losing out on business and clients turning to alternatives, who may not return after this is over.
As a start, this constant battle for living wages and raises to match inflation is a fools game. While laudible goals, if there isn't enough money to accomplish the goals, you just speed the path to bankruptcy and entire workforce unemployed. Sadly, it you want to make more money sometimes that involves changing employers and/or jobs. Where it gets a little murky is maybe CP has enough money to pay CUPW ask but blows it on stupid stuff which is entirely plausible. But still, that is reality. CP loses money fast with no clear path to fixing the economics of their business. Paying employees more doesn't do anything to fix that fundamental issue.
Part of me wonders if unions should buy an ownership stake in businesses. Sure, that is a slight conflict but on the flipside, if their employee demands bankrupt the business the union investment is wiped out. That would help to balance requests vs reality. Right now they can complain about the boogieman and needs for more money and have zero concern about how the business funds the wishlist. If the business dies the union loses income but no capital. Normally they are light on employees and heavy on compensation so bonuses for union leaders would be down a bit but otherwise business as usual. Employees are unwitting pawns in the game propped up by ra-ra unions and echo chamber discussions about how bad they have it and how much more they deserve. The last sentence is not specifically directed at CUPW, ime that is a relatively common scenario and especially prevalent in public sector unions that believe the purse in infinite.
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sburns
Well-known member
Oh clearly they are miss managed. There doesn't seem to be a viable long term strategy. They've been doing this longer then anyone else, but didn't see the rise of Amazon, and all other kinds of disruptions to lettermail and packages. Seems they want to keep the status Quo and hold onto the position of where they have priority access over make changes.
Yeah the union doesn't do itself any favours here, similar to why the TTC is the way it is and makes it harder to get better service because the union can't see the forest for the trees kinda senerio.
IF they can't get a deal in place before the end of the year, that would be shameful.
I don't expect much progress. They have pretty much blown the christmas rush already. Assuming they had a deal tomorrow (shockingly low chance of that imo), workers would be back later this week and it would take a few weeks to clear out the backlog. That gives us a functional CP around Dec 18 or so. Not many christmas packages getting shipped at that point. Most of the rush has passed. If the deal happens a week later, all of the rush has passed.
Once the pressure to save christmas has ended, what's the rush? Management is getting paid. Union management is getting paid. CP may actually have their best quarter in years. Employees take the beating.
I checked mine near the end of last week. Probably first time in a month. All garbage. I normally check every few weeks or so to avoid box filling and getting shut off (it's happened a couple times). I don't plan on changing my pattern any time soon. Maybe if they ditched the flyers I'd check every month as it wouldnt fill up.
BigEvilDoer
Well-known member
Initially, it would cost them millions upon millions of dollars.
The superboxes are not cheap. They are installed by contractors. They need to get city approval for locations of the boxes.
Then they need to buy a sh1t ton of delivery vehicles.
Need to restructure all of the routes, which takes several months to accomplish.
Then there will be a huge revolt by the people not wanting superboxes…
They will definitely reduce labour costs in the long run, but initially, it would be a very very hefty investment. If CP is as bad off as they say, then this can’t be accomplished due to the amount of capital expenditure necessary.
Probably cheaper for now to leave it as is and go once per week delivery unless express.
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AllistonGT
Well-known member
I think that was an offer made about 20 years ago. Union said no thanks.
