No mail Wednesday due to postal strike
Postal workers in Central Okanagan expect to return to work today after 24-hour strike
Mail delivery was halted in the Central Okanagan Wednesday as postal workers walked off the job, joining a series of rotating strikes across the country.
At 6 a.m. Wednesday, 250 Canadian Union of Postal Workers members from Lake Country to Peachland went on strike for 24 hours.
“We expect to be back at work and delivering mail tomorrow,” Matthew Aitken, president of the Kelowna CUPW Local 760, said Wednesday morning.
The local postal workers were joined by nearly 9,000 CUPW members in Toronto, who walked off the job for a second day.
“We’re sending the message that we’re tired and that we want a fair deal, and we want mechanisms put in place so we can fix routes and make sure everybody stays healthy,” said Aitken.
In September, 95 per cent of mail carriers across Canada voted in favour of a strike after failing to reach a new contract agreement with Canada Post.
“It shows that people are really ready for a change, and they want a better deal and they want a fair deal,” said Aitken.
Workers are fighting for improved health and safety measures, job security, service expansion and an end to forced overtime.
“We’re on strike here because our routes were restructured this year and we’ve got some serious overburdening issues,” said Aitken.
Employees are walking more than 25 kilometres a day, and often work several hours of overtime a day, he said.
“When you do that day in and day out, it wrecks your body,” said Aitken. “We’re on strike here in Kelowna because our conditions have gotten so poor in the last 12 months that we had to send a message to the corporation.”
More mail carriers need to be hired to deal with the increased demand for home delivery, said Aitken.
“Parcel volumes for 2018 are up 25 per cent over 2017 numbers,” he said. “These are huge volumes; they’re unprecedented, and we’re the ones who deliver (them) and it’s breaking people.”
Aitken attributed the growing number of packages to the increased popularity of online shopping.
“You can order everything from meals to socks online, and companies know the way of the future is home delivery, not brick and mortar stores, so I don’t think we’ve even seen peak parcels yet,” he said. “It will continue to increase.”
On Wednesday, federal Minister of Labour Patty Hajdu appointed a mediator to assist Canada Post and the union in reaching an agreement.