Canada Post pitches ‘cooling off period’ that would shelve strike until February – November 19, 2018,

CBC another crown corporation wrote detailed the current dispute regarding Canada Post and CUPW you click the link below to read about it in full:

 

Canada Post pitches ‘cooling off period’ that would shelve strike until February

 

The Dispute over pay and working conditions
CUPW’s latest offer proposes:

• A 2.9 per cent annual wage increase.
• Double-time pay for working a sixth or seventh day.
• New wage advancements for temporary workers, based on working 1,000 hours in a fiscal year.
• Injury pay at 80 per cent of regular salary
• Improvements to the company’s short-term disability plan.

The offer from Canada Post that the union rejected over the weekend proposed:

• A two per cent annual wage increase (plus a signing bonus of up to $1,000.)
• Overtime pay for working more than 40 hours.
• 500 new full-time positions over three years.
• The creation of a $10-million health and safety fund to address worker concerns.

Wow a 2.9% annual pay increase, Double-time pay for working a sixth or seventh day, wow talk about eating into a companies profit margins. I’m actually surprised Canada Post even offered a 2% annual wage increase, they’re also offering overtime pay for working overtime hours, but from the business side I can see why Canada Post would reject the “New wage advancements for temporary workers, based on working 1,000 hours in a fiscal year.” offer because what typically happens is that existing workers will turn down overtime hours anyway. Canada Post workers are already the highest paid in their industry.

I’ve worked in Unionized environments before and well, when you work more you get taxed more and what will end up happening is that the temp workers who would then qualify to get additional perks, will, of course, eat into more profits and liabilities as the Canada Post workforce gets even larger.

It’s as clear as day to me that real problem is, of course, Canada Post’s pension plan which should be the real concern for CUPW. That’s where the real problem comes in and it’s something Canada Post employees will have to learn the hard way.

Profits in any business aren’t guaranteed and although e-commerce is bringing in money for Canada Post now, there are no guarantees these profits will continue into the future. A pension plan that has no relation to the world economy or the stock market revolves around the concept of keeping the workforce small and manageable. In America, most of the Republican States have done a pretty good job managing their defined benefit pension plans while the Democrat-run states like New Jersey and Illinois have a Pension crisis.

Canada Posts current Pension is reminiscent of the Illinois Pension plans, where the assumption was that the Illinois economy would continuously grow into infinity, so the public sector grew their workforce to a size they anticipated to see growth in. Well, things didn’t quite turn out as planned which created the crisis they’re experiencing now. Chicago used to be larger than Toronto, not anymore, and once there’s a pension crisis they have to raise prices for services, so the people with the money and the option to leave have left the State, relating to less revenue, in response, Illinois raised Property Taxes, now even Micheal Jordan can’t sell his Chicago Mansion.

Things happen, things change, and CUPW kind of put their full-time workers in a bad situation, as there will be calls now to privatize Canada Post. A lot of Leftist have a hard time understanding why Donald Trump was hired by Americans? Well, it’s things like this, I get it we all want security and more pay, but the concept of Freedom is the freedom to QUIT your job, to tell your A-hole boss to shove it where the sun don’t shine. There’s also the motto to quit while you’re still ahead.

That Canada Post offer looks good to me, I started my business getting paid $14 per hour, sure I had to work 2 jobs, but for myself, the Unions were actually keeping my pay low because once I got hired full time I realized the limitations of collective bargaining. The hard workers suffer for the lazy workers, the individuals who would otherwise be making a lot more money have to settle for 2.9% because it’s collective bargaining. In the private sector when a boss finds hard-working employees it’s in their best interests to pay them more.

There’s a labor shortage in Canada, guess what happens to pay scales when there’s a labor shortage? It goes up, the hard-working employee has more negotiating power. Unfortunately, a lot of Canadians have been taught to view things from the collective bargaining side, where they use an entity like a Union to do their bartering for them.

This isn’t like before, Canada Post main customers are business people, e-commerce is the new driving force of Canada Post, they’re becoming Canada Posts new customers and business people view the world differently, business people aren’t as docile, what they’ll typically do is what Amazon has done, find other options or generally find new creative ways to minimize Canada Posts effects on their bottom lines.

These small tax paying businesses have to meet deadlines, have to pay their employees, can’t strike because our authority is the government who demand we pay taxes whether we were profitable or not. Most small and medium-sized businesses also have to meet payroll they have to pay their employees, and if their employees are being paid with loans that the small or medium sized business had to take out because Canada Post decided to Strike, well…

Interesting times ahead