Saturday, 25 June 2011

Canada Post strike

There seems to be no end in sight to the Canada Post strike/lockout.  The two sides refuse to talk and the NDP is stalling any legislation that might have forced the union back to work.  For what?  Who will be the winner in this?  Well, the answer is - nobody.
There are only losers. 
The union will have lower salaries no matter what happens and they will have lost the wages for the strike/lockout period.  On top of that they will lose jobs in the long run, as the public will shift away from regular mail. They had cushy jobs, high salaried, with great benefits for unskilled labour.  Now those jobs will not only be lower paying, they will slowly start getting phased out.
Canada Post, by locking the union out, has angered the public, who was at the very least indifferent to the rolling strikes and at most angry at the union.  Now the blame has shifted largely to Canada Post.  In due time, they will also have made themselves irrelevant, because people are starting to see that the mail service is not as necessary, as they initially may have believed.  There will be an even larger shift to email and courier services for deliveries.  Customers will not easily trust and forgive the Canada Post for this.
The NDP is causing the most chaos here and are largely contributing to the collapse of the mail service.  Their stupid delay tactics are completely pointless, as the two sides are not even talking.  They think they are defending the common man, the unions, etc.  All they are doing is making people angry because they are not receiving important letters, small businesses are getting hurt by additional costs and are being forced to shut down operations, hopefully only temporarily.  The party is slowly losing support and the ground they gained during the election.  Canadians want this to end, not see it drawn out indefinitely and the NDP is hurting more people than they are fighting for.
The Conservatives will look like a villain no matter what happens.  If they force the union back to work, they will be the evil dictatorship, anti-people, anti-union, anti-freedom.  If the NDP delay tactics give the union and Canada Post enough time to resolve their differences, the Tories will still look bad for trying to pass the legislation and for having the strike take so long.
Finally, there are the Canadian people.  There is a lot of mail being held that people need to receive, not just the bills and the cheques, but also government documents, immigration correspondence, Revenue Canada letters, etc.  Small businesses that rely on Canada Post for shipping their merchandise have to use more expensive couriers and lose most of their profits, or close down shop completely.  The longer the disruption takes, the higher the chances that they will not recover.
The NDP should give up their communist and outdated views and let the bill pass.  If they cannot make real changes to it and there is no end in sight to the dispute, what's the point of this procrastination?  It is damaging all of Canada.  Enough, have some common sense, look after the majority of the people, not just the corrupt unions.  I'm sure even the Canada Post employees want this to end soon, as they are probably already feeling the pinch in their wallets.

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