Welcome to Our New website, hope you enjoy your stay.  Our Local Office has moved and is located at 730A 45th Street West. Be sure to check back frequently for News, Upcoming Events and Meetings.

Also be sure to keep an eye out for your fellow brothers and sisters, and be sure to sign up to be a Shop Steward, as there is a shortage.   Please feel free to attend all "General Meetings" as they are open to all our members whether your Full-Time, Part-Time or Term.  Come and express your questions, concerns or comments.

Lets remember to educate, be patient with new co-workers, and treat each other with tolerance and respect. Our employer would love to see us fighting amongst each other. We would be serving them a great service by doing so. Our biggest asset right now is to remain solidified, loyal, and supportive to our co-workers, even if their views don't line up exactly with ours.

Solidarity is what makes us strong, and keeps us strong, management has a two-step strategy to LOWER the wages and benefits and we'll also lose paid wash-up periods. Due to Moya Greene's forced implementation of the "Modern Post".  

Tony Andrade has made a montage of strikes past, and would like to share them with our new and all members. This montage shows the importance of why Solidarity is so important. Demonstrating why all CUPW members MUST stick together and protect on another. In our membership there are some vulnerable members that require the stronger members to take them under their wing. Management has targeted these vulnerable members bully, harass, and intimidate them in an attempt to strip them of their self-esteem and their dignity. That way they would be good mindless automatons in accordance with their plan of turning everyone into mindless automatons and taking a pay cut, while management fills their pockets and get exuberant bonuses.  Click Here To See

Solidarity

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out.

CANADA POST ESCALATES DISPUTE BY INTENTIONALLY DISRUPTING SERVICE IN SASKATOON

SASKATOON– Canada Post unnecessarily escalated the dispute with postal workers yesterday in Saskatoon, affecting mail delivery to about 3,500 homes and businesses. The company sent dozens of temporary postal workers home and refused to provide service. The employer also told postal workers it would not pay overtime required to complete deliveries.

"Negotiations are still continuing and there was no need for Canada Post to inflict this disruption of service upon the people of Saskatoon," says Lana Smidt, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) Saskatoon Local. "This clearly demonstrates that Canada Post is not committed to service delivery, but instead to trying to make CUPW look bad to the public. Our fight is not with the public. In fact, one of the biggest issues in the dispute is over our vision and commitment to maintaining and improving service to Canadians."

Another issue that remains outstanding between the two sides is improving safety at work. The new delivery model for letter carriers is unsafe. It is impossible, for example, for letter carriers to carry mail in their hands and on their arms and still climb stairs and walk on snow and ice without getting injured. In addition, clerks in the plant are suffering from shoulder and back problems due to repetitive work on machines that are not ergonomically safe.

The public is encouraged to contact their MPs and demand that Canada Post respect its obligations to deliver the mail by negotiating a settlement with postal workers. After all, the public post office belongs to you!

For more information please contact Lana Smidt, President of CUPW Saskatoon Local, at 306-653-4143.

Postal workers voted in record numbers to give the National Executive Board and the National Negotiating Committee a strong strike mandate. Throughout the strike vote process, the Negotiating Committee has been busy at the bargaining table, pressing forward with the union's demands.

Staffing and Job Protection

The Union has tabled language, based on your demands that will prevent CPC from contracting out work and instead provides a process whereby work can be easily contracted in. We have also been promoting union demands which would improve staffing for Group 1 workers. We will do this by strengthening the ratio and negotiating a mechanism to automatically generate a regular position whenever a temporary worker works 1,000 hours or more during a year. 

Work Methods

We have presented comprehensive language to improve both Appendixes V and CC. These provisions govern the establishment of the workload for both letter carriers (LCs) and Mail Service Couriers (MSCs). We have also tabled language to provide letter carriers with the right to case sequenced mail so that they are able to deliver mail using the single bundle work method. Our language limits the use of the multiple bundle delivery to stop and go and centralized points of delivery

Medical Privacy and Financial 

We have also tabled language which will prevent CPC from choosing the doctor that an employee must see when further medical information is required. Also an employee shall have the right not to provide additional information unless required by an arbitrator. We have also been addressing some of our financial demands and have tabled language for the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) to ensure our wage gains are not reduced by future price inflation.

Show your support

The coming days are crucial for the success of our negotiations. On May 11^th, the union will be conducting a day of action to support our demands. It is time to tell CPC to stop talking about their rollbacks and start addressing the real needs of postal workers.

Despite its many inaccuracies, the recent report of the Montreal Economic Institute (Canada Post: Opening Up to Competition) is accurate in one respect. The study confirms that public ownership of Canada Post continues to provide Canadians with postage rates that are much lower than those charged by the few privatized post offices in Europe.

The report fails to mention the actual postage rates in the privatized post offices it selects for comparison – Germany, Austria and the Netherlands - so let's do some easy math. In Canada we pay 59 cents to mail a standard letter. Compare this rate to Germany ($0.77 Can), Austria ($0.77 Can, set to go up soon) and the Netherlands ( $0.64 Can). Our public post office wins hands down.

Canada Post has been consistently turning a profit for the past 16 years and this money flows back to the government – to us - in taxes and dividends. So what is this report's "productivity problem"?

The authors of this study are using a jumble of bogus comparisons to try to justify their bias towards deregulation, privatization and anti-union measures. Don't buy this shoddy argument. It will end up costing all of us.

Denis Lemelin, national president, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

For a detailed critique of the report please contact CUPW at 613-236-7238.