None of what follows may be considered the opinion of any one person, especially that of the writer. This is purely content passed along on from others, on behalf of several postal workers who each have a wealth of ideas and perspectives developed from years of experience.
A disturbing number of postal workers can be heard muttering things which just aren’t true, echoing what the corporation has repeated & tried to implant in their heads over the years. Example: Former CEO George Clermont told reporters posties only work 4 hours and not the 8 they get paid for. Moya Green and cohorts implemented a ruthless, heartless crusade to rip apart postal workers, destroy public postal services, and destroy all the things about the job which made it great. Their PR departments burned the midnight oil making up all sorts of strategies tailored to achieve their objectives. Their plans, apparently based out of a bewildering contempt and hatred of all things labour, have had a lot of success, combined with the intervention of a government that supports their vision.
Some of their messages have landed with many employees. Workers can be heard/seen avoiding customer contact like it’s the plague, thinking it takes “too long” when in fact we need our customers more than ever, & not just to put food on the family’s table, but for strength against the forces of corporate power & Conservative intervention.
Workers can be heard/seen doing anything & everything they can to cut down the time they need to do their jobs, bragging about it to supervisors and co-workers alike, and even leaving “cheat sheets” out for all the world to see. Tossing packages on porches and taking off without ringing the doorbell and following “safe drop” procedure. If workers really care about preserving their jobs and having a career, for themselves & those who follow, they must completely drop all those sorts of destructive behaviours.
Don’t leave cheat sheets out, the employer may be directly or indirectly using them to make your job worse in future restructures. You’re giving away the “efficiency time” you busted your hump to find, which made the job tolerable, even pleasurable, for you in the first place. Think you’re helping a co-worker that way? You’re not. You don’t know who’s covering you or for exactly how long, how they’re going to do the route, or whether it’ll emerge that you’re doing something improper like not following the line of travel. The information could easily be used against you, in the design of new, more streamlined routes. You could sacrific the time you saved which could’ve been spent talking with a customer, helping a co-worker, keeping up your edit book, or some other fruitful activity.
When people scream through their routes, despite the fact the boss sees this, and predictably responds with worse routes with each successive restructure, it really makes one wonder. If someone has an urgent errand awaiting them on a particular day it’s understandable, but continuing the behaviour on an indefinite, ongoing basis is obviously unsustainable in the long run. Others have said it calls into question whether they have forgotten their line of work is, like it or not, a “public service”.
If you prefer to bury your head in the sand, or have been convinced to buy into the corporate/ right-wing line that it’s instead “all about money”, you’ll soon find out what’s apparent to the senior workers: you’ve only signed up to play a game you can’t win. Regardless of how much you try, or who you decide to blame, you’re left facing the grim, inescapable results. You’re stuck in a game of “let’s chase our tails, rush till we drop, & race each other to the lowest common denominator”. That doesn’t sound like someone who cares about providing the best service they can to their customers, which is the hallmark of nearly every suceessful business on this Earth.
It sounds ugly, like someone not at all happy with their job, and not interested in contributing to the bigger picture . It doesn’t sound like someone aware of their real place within the larger picture, and how much impact their choices actually have on the welfare of others around them, as well as themselves.
Postal workers used to vehemently defend such things as “percentage of coverage” , or “working to rule”, and adhere to these principles as best they could, including mentoring others on how vital it is to comply. All routes are partly based on these rules & guidlines. It’s integral to the job. There was a division of mail among “first class”, “second class”, “bulk”, and so on, with each class having different delivery standards. In actual; fact, this is still the case, regardless of what labels are applied today. The employer certainly feels very comfortable handling mail in whatever ways it prefers, even if it results in missed commitments. Those labels are part and parcel of their strategy to get you to take it all out. To forget all about the bread-and-butter components of the LC & MSC route measurement systems, & to make improvements to our jobs each time the contract comes up for negotiation.
Rather than doing this, too many people bend over backwards every time a supervisor grabs the PA. “Get that turnaround mail up!” “Your partner isn’t ready, so come back for free and then go out again!” “Your application for leave is denied due to operational requirements!” “Your grandmother died? Too bad, use your personal days!” “Fill out a form like an untrustworthy peon to “claim” your OT”.
Carriers used to leave bulk mail in the case because they’d reached their percentage of coverage with other more important mail, and bulk mail isn’t time sensitive, at least not to the level of first class mail for example. Now, carriers deliver it for free, just because some manager somewhere supposedly said so. They’re taking away relay boxes, not giving workers time values for washing up, which is basic hygiene, at the end of the route. Not giving carriers proper credit for all the latest arbitrary rule changes they incessantly come out with. They brought in scanners, without proper time credit, or compensation for all the added responsibility if not time spent fiddling with them and “exception reports”. Telling carriers to have your lunch at some slum fast-food joint your wife & your doctor would definitely disapprove of. Not so many years ago, the union relinquished parcel quotas for most motorized routes, thinking we had to in order to get back contracted-out work.
What are postal workers doing about it? Surely there must a response to all of this, every time postal workers are told to do more with less, not treated with respect, & decency, and every time the contract isn’t honoured.
It’s time to stop running. Time to stop finger pointing at each other, which serves postal workers no purpose. It just brings those corporate goals closer to achievement. It’s time to fight for all of these things, none of which by themselves are really as small and insignificant as we think. Get yourself a stack of grievance forms and realize the collective agreement is your friend. Learn it, because your job depends on it, and on how doggedly you’re willing to defend each & every protection & benefit you still have.
For as long as most can remember, following the rules and all the fundamental methods have been optional. A worker could choose to take a break, or have lunch, or do anything else. Or choose not to. Workers were also indoctrinated that to speak up to their union about counter-productive behaviours of others, was out of line, deemed to be against solidarity. It’s always been up to management to enforce things like start times. Which gave management enormous additional powers above their ability to manage the business as they see fit. For they could decide which of the union’s own rules would be enforced, based on the interests of the corporation , especially if it meant reducing labour costs.
And it’s time for that to change, if postal workers really want to save their jobs. Working to rule must become automatic procedure for all union workers, & perhaps the only way that’ll happen is if it’s mandatory to do so. Continuing down the road of the past has brought posties to the present juncture. A place where some posties come in early, even 90 minutes before they’re scheduled to, and work for free. All in a rush to grab parking spots, bins, and get their mail prepared as soon as possible in order to get their route keys & hit the ground running. All at the expense of other workers, who then get pushed back further in the queue, all the while listening to more noise and being harrassed into keeping up. Managers use those speedsters as examples, & pressure the other workers to hurry, and do more work with less time, hoping posties will forget that their work must be paid for. Hoping posties forget all about their contract, and all the things that contribute to making their jobs decent.
Another aspect of management’s non-enforcement of start times is that they can sit back & observe as more & more posties follow suit, and for some mysterious unfathomable, perhaps selfish reason, “make it work”. Which makes it easier and easier to restructure routes and give each worker a larger & larger workload. Management keeps employing this strategy and succeeding. They count on the speedsters and roadrunners to gripe for a short time about how bad their latest route is, then watch as posties proceed to get it done faster & faster, until overtime is either non-existent, or minimal.
Inevitably, a considerable percentage of these workers fall victim to injury and become just another statistic in the long line of workers mistreated by their employer . Management then employs other strategies to discard these workers to graveyard shift or push them off the payroll. Anything to polish off the statistics, fatten bonuses, & follow the orders of their superior managers. And management continues to enjoy huge success with these tactics.
These vicious cycles must not be allowed to continue. Going by the book must be mandatory, and not merely a forgettable, throwaway option. The contract with it dwindling protections cannot be allowed to be dusty, mumbo-jumbo jargon that someone can choose to ignore, to suit what they perceive as their convenience and as their right.
The time to consider what is contained in the collective agreement as unalterable constants we may pick & choose, has to be over. It’s time to recognize the provisions of the collective agreement as precious, as privileges, things we cherish and fight to uphold, because we know they can and are being taken away.
Posties need to remember they don’t actually have 8 hour shifts, that they’re not required or supposed to be there for 8. They’re paid to do specific tasks which are timed out to the fraction of a second. Akin to mechanics, painters, or assembly line workers.
It’s become so tiresome listening to people parrot the corporate lies that perhaps workers should all be working longer hours and carrying heavier loads. The lies would have you believe you’d be the only ones heading home on the roads if you left at noon or some similar time of day. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Rush hour traffic begins by 2 pm now, & picks up noticeably thereafter. Did all those workers start their shifts by 6 am, or earlier? Of course not. The streets are almost completely empty until around 6:30, when vehicles begin to stream into the city from suburbs.
The fact is that when workers finish their work, they go home. And when each of their duties is timed out to the fraction of a second, they ought to go home once those duties are completed, and go home with pride. If they found a legitimate way to save themselves time, all the more power to them, so long as they didn’t thumb their noses at the very basic things which protect them and their job from the scythe of the ever-present bean counter.
Some of the time values are based on murky “averages” but the routes are designed to take 480 minutes, including about 1 hour each & every day, of doing nothing with the mail at all. Workers do get paid to use the washroom, have a 30 minute lunch, read the order book, etc etc etc. So long as a carrier follows the contract, takes their breaks, etc, they SHOULD enjoy the benefit of finishing before their “finish time”, and should have no qualms about defending that, should anybody, including their employer, attempt to distort the facts in an effort to force workers to do yet more work, without proper credit. This has been one of the central problems for postal workers.
So by all means, take pride in your job. Take pride in yourself. If you don’t, who will? Wear the uniform, take pride in it. Or do something to make it better.
Take pride in your co-workers, and stand up for them. Maybe one day soon enough, they’ll defend you. Treat them as you would want to be treated. Realize who the real enemy is: it’s the employer if the employer chooses to treat you or the contract with contempt and disrespect.
Take pride in serving your customers. Not only do they ultimately pay for the postal service you’re supposed to be delivering, you need their support no more than ever. Because unlike the 1960s, 70s, or 80os, the public has many communication options and doesn’t need us now, for the most part. As the face of the post office, the visible front line workers, carriers must provide the very best service they can, so that people will WANT to use Canada Post and not any other delivery service.
Take pride in your contract and your union, and refuse all gimmicks, ploys, games, & lies conjured up in an effort to get more work out of you for absolutely nothing.
In the absence of leadership we can see & hear, & feel from the union’s national level, in the absence of a busy public relations department spreading our messages to Canadians, and in the absence of a charismatic well-spoken knowledgeable, and compelling leader,
it is up to each postal worker to begin the “push back“. Now is always the best time to stand up for what you depend on, to put food on the children’s kitchen table, after a very disappointing round of negotiations.
It’s time for postal workers to stop running, not just to stand up for workplace justice & dignity, but for their collective agreement. For that is the only contract they have with which to hold the corporation to account.
silvercharm 