Canada Post: Who needs it? It’s time that they got rid of the post office and the lazy whining bastards that work there. All they ever do is complain about how bad things are while raking in the big bucks and sitting on their fat do nothing asses. What alternatives do we have to the PO? Well try email and online banking and direct deposit and not to mention couriers. The post office is a relic, they need to go. —PO’ed
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 1, 2011.
C.U.P.W. presents “Surly”, the new postal union spokesman:
http://www.project-me.com/images/postman.g…
We don’t need it? Take it away and see just how much we need it.
Courier? Yeah, no thanks. I don’t exactly want to pay double to ship a parcel.
And what about regular old mail? Courier that too? Or perhaps we should go back to carrier pigeon. Or the pony express. There are some of us who enjoy hand written letters, not an impersonal email. And there are some members of society who are not tech-savvy (I’m sure you’ve got a grandmother or a great aunt who wouldn’t know how to turn on a computer if their lives depended on it) – are we to expect 89 year old grandma to get a computer and learn, now, how to email? Yeah, not likely.
Personally, unions, in most cases, drive me batshit crazy. I’m not saying I agree or disagree with the possible/probably CP strike. I’m just saying that completely doing away with CP isn’t likely ever going to happen.
We need CP but they can get rid of the whiny union wogs. The have great pay, hours, and benefits yet want more. It wouldn’t take long to replace them.
If they strike on thursday it’s going to fuck. me. over. because I’m on contract right now and I don’t get direct deposit — I get my cheque mailed to me each week and since we’re going to summer hours tomorrow, my lunch is cut down to 30 minutes which means I don’t have time to go downtown to pick it up.
So, I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing… maybe my retired father can make a trip downtown to pick it up for me? If they’ll let him…. Ugh.
Ask them to send it Fed Ex or courier.
that’s what’s going to happen, likely, it just sucks because I have ALL my $$$ tied up because I’m going to Toronto for a while in a couple weeks and extra expenses like courier expenses piss me off. lol
Canada Post bought out Purolator Courier a few years back probably as a hedge against this kind of thing. Every time the posties go on strike, Canada Post loses millions of dollars and more than a few customers to the couriers.
in less than 5 years o.p., the postal service will be shut down world wide. there isn’t very much that you can’t get online these days. even cheques are direct deposit, and you can pay just about all your bills online. time to go dinosaurs.
they wanna go on strike..fuck ’em ..lock them out …let them stew for a few months …but no..my prediction: overly generous contract settlement at the last minute 🙁
This would affect me a whooole lot. The place I work, most of the stuff we do revolves around Canada Post. We do have couriers and stuff too but not for things like mail-outs that go out to hundreds of people almost every week and we also process mail-in rebates. We have so much of them that I’m actually working 50 hours a week now just to keep on top of it…. if the mail stopped or slowed down then I guess I could catch up on some things but hopefully if they do strike it won’t last long or I’ll be work-less :(.
There are A LOT of local courier services around HRM that are faster than fedex and UPS/puralator, etc…. My mom’s office has to send a lot of time sensitive documents to the courts so they’ll often use the local couriers because they get things back and forth really quickly.
So I expect if this strike goes through they’ll make a killing!
I’m all for unions — yes, I said it — but in industries that NEED protection by unions and as much as I would enjoy the spoils of being a federal public service employee (which does include canada post), I think they’re overpaid as it is and think that while they’re perfectly entitled to do so, striking is ridicluous on their part.
There are many union memberships that don’t make tons of money and their union works hard for them to maintain what they have during contract talks. It’s places like Canada Post that put a bad name on all unions. Once I’m hired permanently, I’ll be in the union and trust me, there’s no overpayment for services here. The salaries are perfectly in line with what the job descriptions are and the benefits are great. I don’t even think the membership I’m going to be in has ever striked and I don’t really ever seeing them do so either.
CUPW & CUPE are the poster children(emphasis) for everything that is wrong with the labor movement. IMO catering to their extortionate demands of “More For Less” has done more to fuck up our national finances than ALL the fighter aircraft that have ever rolled off the Lockheed-Martin assembly lines.
Open Message: My bias in this case is pretty hard-wired so please spare yourself the effort of tossing a large word salad replete with statistics from whatever eminent , “un-biased” left-wing think tank “Canadian Forum” or “This Magazine” are quoting from this month. It won’t change a goddamned thing. >: )
Just to look at things from a different angle…
Imagine you’ve been working for a company for 35 years or so, working your way up so that you have a decent pension plan, benefits, and can retire comfortably. Then imagine, one day, that your contract expires and you need to renegotiate. But the pension and benefits you worked so hard for for 35 years need to be compromised significantly. Would you sit back and take it? My dad has been in a union for that long, and was less than a year from retiring – now he has to work another 5 years to be where he expected to be now (fyi, he doesn’t work for Canada Post, he works for a hospital, in a non-health related position). It’s easy enough for us to say “oh they already have terrific benefits and salary, they must be greedy” but the reality is they base their life around it – much like you or I would plan to buy a house or a car or educate our kids based on our job.
In the end, because Purolator is a crown corporation and will be doing most of the parcel delivery across the country, the people who get screwed over by this strike aren’t just the people working there, but you and I: we’re the ones paying extra to ship something with a courier instead of Canada Post. And while I personally don’t use the mailbox much, I use it everyday at work, and wouldn’t be able to correspond with my clients without it.
Hollah!, sorry your Dad failed to mind the financial store while working for 35 years……….but, had he invested privately along with his hospital pension then he would be sailing along on easy street today (or last year even!)
Employees should NEVER rely solely on one source of retirement revenue as things change and what you are counting on may not be counting on you! ~ It’s YOUR retirement so have as many investment streams as you can afford so should one be compromised you still off-set this with the others.
I agree with you there, hollah! — when organizations start insisting that union membership give up gains made in previous collective agreement negotiations that’s when I agree 100% that a strike is in order.
NO ONE should have to take a cut in pay or benefits or working conditions.
Like YOU wouldn’t be pissed off, koda, if your employer cut YOUR salary or benefits.
Stop being such a c-unt all the time and say something useful for once.
while i never want to see anyone lose salary or benefits, i agree in part with the op. give it a few years, once the generation who don’t like/use computers have passed on, and i believe you’ll see regular snail mail become obsolete. i use internet banking and e-bills, i get paid by direct deposit, i correspond through email and facebook. the only things i really get in my mailbox is junk mail and government mail (taxes, voting cards, etc etc). i think the postal workers need to be careful with their negotiations and potential strike… because i can see canada post disappearing in the next 5-10 years…