Health and safety concerns of postal workers ignored, says Fredericton local president

The health and safety concerns of postal workers are being sidelined in the ongoing dispute with Canada Post, says the president of a union local. “Health and safety, as you’ve seen on the news, never comes up,” said Shawn Oldenburg, president of Local 054 of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. He made the comments just hours before strike action was expected to begin across the country. Canada Post and CUPW remain at an impasse months after the federal government forced striking postal workers back to work and launched an industrial commission of inquiry in December. News about the strike has been dominated by Canada Post’s dire financial situation. The Crown corporation operates on revenues from its products and services, not taxpayer dollars. But earlier this year, the feds announced that it would receive a $1 billion repayable loan to avoid insolvency amid mounting losses. Oldenburg, who has been a letter carrier for more than 30 years and represents workers in the Fredericton-Oromocto area, said that issues related to the safety and well-being of workers are being ignored. He said health and safety issues include the introduction of a system called “separate sort and delivery,” which eliminates the part of the day that delivery workers normally spend indoors sorting the mail, turning delivery and sorting into two separate jobs. Union leaders say this results in workers covering longer distances on foot and spending more time in the elements. It also means postal workers end up carrying mail in both hands, Oldenburg said. “We have three points of contact as a letter carrier when walking upstairs, two feet and an arm,” he said. “Well, you’ve still got your two feet, but you’ve lost both your arms because they have mail in them.” He also took issue with a recently published report from the Industrial Inquiry Commission. It states, in part, that rules in collective agreements “restrict Canada Post from exercising basic management rights such as assigning existing employees additional work when they have finished their assigned tasks,” resulting in what commissioner William Kaplan called “trapped time.” Oldenburg said that it’s uncommon to finish early, but he’s concerned that changes to those provisions could result in letter carriers being tasked by management to deliver mail on unfamiliar routes, adding to physical strain and contributing to job losses. The Kaplan report also called for changes including the phasing-out of daily door-to-door residential letter mail delivery, and an end to moratoriums on the closure of rural post offices and community mailbox conversions. The report also said that Canada Post must have “the flexibility to hire part-time employees” for tasks like weekend parcel delivery, adding that they should “not be gigified jobs, but good jobs, attractive jobs” under collective agreements. The report states that “employers need to hire part-time employees as well, and some people are interested in only part-time employment.” Oldenburg questioned those conclusions. “I don’t know of anybody who’s going out, actively looking for a part time job to support their family, or to buy a house or to start their life.” David Gordon Koch is a journalist with the NB Media Co-op. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Stations and Users (CACTUS).