Good Morning Prime Mister.

Another sleepless night from those on the front line of the coming postal strike, as some of us are not rich, and need our jobs to pay for things like rent, mortgages, food and medication. But we have no choice but to push for a strike in order to gain some ground and some respect. You might not have heard the technical side of this strike. One thing is the volume. A mailman will now, today, have to try to deliver some 100-150 parcels in a single day along with the flyers and mail. This amount is projected to increase 20% each year without additional compensation or added delivery time. For my part, the problem of being part time is my wages are based on the hours I work, but as a shop steward, I have to bring forward the issues of my fellow workers. Since I am part time, the retaliation I face is Canada Post and its administrators will try to intimidate me by cutting my hours. Those hours that I worked that they won’t pay me? I will have to wait for the pay, as the union could take as long as 6 months before they can get my money for me, so much for instructions to Canada Post to be nicer to employees. As a worker, I have no power. I can only name and shame people, hence this letter. One of the obvious reasons, we are going on strike would be to increase wages but also to remove those wage gaps and the ability of petty people to illegally pay games with my wages.

My point begins with something called Appendix “P”. I am very sure you have heard nothing about this. It means nothing to anyone really. What it means to me, is the ration of full time to part time to temporary employees, hardly the stuff of gripping novels, I‘m afraid. Here is my story and why it means something important to me.

In July of 2017, working as a part time employee, my hours and all the other part timers in my unit, 5 of us, were increased from 25 to 40. We were working full time hour at part time status. This worked out well for all concerned. The unit was hitting all its company targets such as budget. However, at the start of this September, 2018, right when contracts negotiations were getting busy, suddenly we were back to part time, 25 hours. For the last year, whenever there was a problem with my fellow employees, I would tell them to not rock the boat, working 40 hours, outweighed the problem they were having. And they agreed. But now we were back to lower hours, a floodgate opened and they had issues to resolve. As shop steward, I collect their issues and brought them forward, thus started the harassment attacking me, which is not supposed to happen. I believe you clearly stated on February 22, 2018, that the bullying at Canada Post stopped as of now. That memo never made it down as far as I am. The first thing that happened, I presented my member’s issues to my Superintendant. Now remember how I said I worked 25 hours? In that meeting, where as I was trying to get them to correct our payroll to reflect the correct hours that we worked, for our vacation and sick day would be missing hours when the system was incorrect as it still is. I was told, almost word for word, “Oh yea, you were working 25 hours that was a test so now you work 24 hours.” A clear threat, that not only did my fellow shop stewards agree was intimidation, the union local also agreed and  presented it to the his boss. The unit manager felt it was over the top. So we had to re-do the whole meeting all over again, only without the threats and intimidation. Sadly, it is so ingrained in the culture that even when warned not to make threats and not to try and intimidate me, the superintendant failed to follow instructions. The threats were minor and petty. But there were more threats as well.

I work on the Health and Safety Committee. Part of that means once a month I have to travel some 30 km between locations to attend the meeting. Up until this month, (September) I would be paid 8 hours. The travel is an hour there and back for 2 hours, a 5 hour meeting and an hour for lunch and breaks. The travel time is covered in our collective agreement, (art 32.01), it is covered in the Terms of Reference for Health and Safety, (art 5) and finally, it is even covered in the Federal law under the Labor Code, (art 135.1). Yet, surprise, surprise, I am not covered. Canada Post refused to pay me. See they are still trying to put me in my place. The funny thing is? All those issues I presented in September? None of them were mine! But now, all grievance Inquiries that I file have my name and only my name on them. I will not let administration have the chance to bully, intimidate and harass others as they are trying to do to me.

Long story short, what does this have to do with negotiation and Appendix “P”? If we had a better Appendix “P” that clearly forced Canada Post to live up to its obligation for staff of full time to part time, the people in my unit would already be full time and would not have to suffer this sort of intimidation, harassment and bullying that I have.

I, as a lowly worker, have no power. All I can do is name and shame people. So for my bullying, I will make it known to the union, maybe they can help. I will make it be known to local management higher up than my manager to shame them. And lastly, I will send my story to you. So you can see just what is at stake in these negotiations. Real people, real lives are being really bullied while working for the Federal Government. Don’t you think it’s time we ended bullying? Make Canada Post give us a fair shake to the negotiating table to help eliminate the petty abuse of power like detailed in my story above where they tried to steal 3 paid hours. Hardly a lot of money compared to the National Debt. But still, that 60$ or so was mine, not mine in 6 months from now, but mine yesterday when I should have been paid it.

Thanks for your time and anything you can do here!