Tentative Deal In Postal Talks
Tuesday, August 30, 2016 @ 3:59 PM
Agreements in principle have been reached by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Canada Post for both the urban and rural bargaining units.
“We can’t give details of the agreements at this time, but we’re pleased that our members don’t have to resort to taking job action,” said Mike Palecek, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
The agreements must be ratified by fifty thousand postal workers across the country before they become the new contracts.
The word of the agreement means there will be no job action.
Comments
The majority of the time, the collective bargaining agreement process works! No need to take a “stick” “bully” approach to preventing strikes when a government repeatedly passes “back to work legislation” before a strike even occurs.
No sense in any Union taking the “stick” “bully” approach when their cause is lost, and their leadership knows it. And all going on strike is going to do for their members is a loss of the wages they could’ve made if they’d stayed working. Sometimes it takes a session or two of “back to work legislation” to drive that point home to them at times when their going on strike would not only deprive their members of wages they’ll never get back, but also negatively impact on the rest of the economy while it’s coming through an externally caused global recession.
So the Harper Government enacted preemptive “back to work legislation” four (4) times because they thought it was in the best interests of the union members?
Wow… and you submitted your comment straight faced I imagine.
JGalt, when it comes right down to it all any Union is, or tries to be, is a “monopoly labour corporation”. It tries to make a higher price for its ‘product’ ~ labour ~ by keeping it artificially scarce. A strike is one of its primary means of inducing this scarcity.
The public pays the price. Or it goes without.
Neither higher prices for mail delivery services, nor all the other prices that would also have to rise as businesses that depend on the mail had to recover the additional costs of increased postage rates, would be very helpful in a time of global recession.
Nor would have been a lockout at Canada Post if that Crown corporation had dug in its heels and tried to make necessary changes to enable it to maintain itself in the black.
So the Harper government did what was best for “the greater good” in tough economic times. It could have simply sold the whole works, or shut it down completely, and let the private sector take over. It didn’t, did it?
The International Monetary Fund disagrees with part of your premise, it believes the decline in Union power has increase income inequality. Go figure.
.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-imf-agrees-loss-of-union-power-20150325-column.html
The International Monetary Fund is only (conveniently) looking at PART of the issue ~’income inequality’. Incomes have always been unequal, simply because some jobs require greater skills than others, and the acquisition of those skills often means foregoing income in the present for the prospect of a greater income in the future.
As regards those in business who have “made it big” by taking some risk others would be loathe to take, we only hear about them because they are made out to be ‘winners’. We pay scant attention to the far greater number who’ve taken some similar risk and lost. Sometimes everything they’ve had.
But lets just suppose for a moment that ALL incomes were “equal”. What would happen? A new found prosperity for the majority? Perhaps briefly, but it would certainly be short lived. Any consumable beyond the buying power of the ‘equalitised income’ simply would no longer be made. And those who had a hand in making it would be unemployed, and have no income. Unless we further made deficient the incomes of those still working in order to keep them.
JGalt, here’s a question for you, a really simple one!
Do you think that it is possible for a strike to occur as a direct result of unreasonable demands by a union!
The answer is either a “YES, it is possible”, or a “NO, it is not possible”!
So, what do you think?
First, the demands weren’t unreasonable.
Secondly, even if the demands were unreasonable the Union could still strike or, in the company’s case, lock out.
So the answer is yes.
My question pertains to unreasonable demands by ANY union and ANY strike, and not specifically to this latest Canada Post situation!
My question to JGalt, one that he has yet to respond to, is whether or not in the history of unions and the history of strikes, has any strike ever occurred as a direct result of unreasonable demands by a union?
JGalt praises the “union” as if it is NEVER at fault. I’m just trying to determine if he is capable of acknowledging that sometime the “union” is the bad guy in negotiations!
Good luck with that, right?
If the postal workers were smart they would accept whatever offer is tabled, where else could they get a well paying cushy job and a pension for doing a job which quite honestly a 10 year old could do?
Jgalt would like to see the rise of communism in society. Sorry Jgalt some of us will always strive to do better and earn more. As unfair as this seems to you it is human nature. The union will get very moderate gains in contract but being a 2 year deal look for privatizing of Canada Post to happen very quickly in the next 2 years. Purolator will continue to grow and siphon off Canada Post duties until Canada Post is a shell and then folds. Before Jgalt cries about the union wages at Canada Post vs Purolator, the wages are better at Purolator. The wage there must be earned though and not just entitled too like the union at Canada Post
Thanks for the demonstration of right wing ideology Ryder, now I am a communist.
First, the fact is that when unions are stronger the economy as a whole does better. Unions restore demand to an economy by raising wages for their members and putting more purchasing power to work, enabling more hiring. On the flip side, when labor is weak and capital unconstrained, corporations hoard, hiring slows, and inequality deepens. Thus we have today both record highs in corporate profits and record lows in wages.
Second, unions lift wages for non-union members too by creating a higher prevailing wage. Even if you aren’t a member your pay is influenced by the strength or weakness of organized labor. The presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. Their absence sets off a race to the bottom.
Think about Purolator having free license to hire even cheaper, less expensive, Temporary Foreign Workers… but no one wants to talk about Company / Corporation misuse of the TFW Program… of course not, because it does not fit right wing ideology.
Comments for this article are closed.