Canada Post workers declared a nation-wide strike Friday, November 15. Every post office across the country is closed for all but essential business — Canada Pension, EI, and Baby Bonus cheques will still be delivered.
The Gazette switched to Canada Post delivery last year to ensure delivery to every mailbox in the County, residential and commercial.
But for two decades before that, the Gazette was delivered by an independent team of drivers and walkers. Some of them will be delivering the Gazette once again this week, and every week for the duration of the strike.
So rest assured: the Gazette will be delivered on time, across the County. If you have a rural mailbox and are not getting your Gazette, please let us know.
In town, the Gazette will not be thrown onto your lawn as of days of old. It will be available at street boxes: in Picton we have temporary boxes at the end of Downes Ave, Farmington Street, Metro Grocery, the Beer Store, the Picton Arena and at the Harbourview Clinic offices at bottom of town hill.
In Wellington, there are extra boxes at Foodland and the Arena.
Around the County: Rossmore Stop has the Gazette on Hwy. 62. We have placed boxes at Hawthorn Motors – Carrying Place, and in Consecon across from the Hamlet Grocery Store. There are newspaper boxes at PECish Bakery in Milford, The Store in Cherry Valley, the Wellington Museum, Picton Tim Hortons’s, the Armoury, the Glenora Ferry, Base31’s Commissary and, of course at the Gazette office at 100 Picton Main Street. Copies are also available at the Picton LCBO and Agrarian, the County Farm Store, The Royal, Kelly’s Food Mart on Union, as well as a variety of smaller shops and businesses. Help yourself, and take one for a neighbour if need be.
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The Director General of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services has been acting as a special mediator to support both sides in reaching a deal. On 27 November, however, federal Labour Minister Steve MacKinnon announced mediation was suspended. “After several intensive days of negotiation,” he wrote on X (Twitter), “parties remain too far apart on critical issues for mediation to be successful at this time.”
Pressure to resume talks is increasing as businesses across the country are feeling the impact, but as of 5 December, no negotiating has taken place.
Nobody has a network like Canada Post. They have every address, and weather-proof access to thousands of mailboxes in its local post office network in the County alone.
Canada Post workers are unionized, their work stable, regular, and secure. Or it is supposed to be, at least.
Perhaps the most contentious issue of the strike concerns seven-day parcel delivery: Canada Post wants to be able to deliver parcels on weekends as well as during the week.
But to do that, it wants to contract part-time workers, who would be ineligible for full-time, unionized benefits, like double pay for working weekends and holidays.
It’s a tough issue, bringing Canada Post’s union right up against online shopping and the gig economy, twinned forces that have challenged the Crown corporation for a decade.
There is right on both sides. Canada Post’s wage offer of an 11.5% increase over four years is quite a bit below other public sector compensation packages negotiated during the last two years of spiking inflation. And the union is right to worry about gig workers taking over well paid unionized positions.
On the other hand, Canada Post is losing money at a rapid clip. The corporation says it has lost $3 billion since 2018. If letter mail is almost a thing of the past, it also faces intense competition from Amazon, UPS, and FedEx in the package delivery sector.
Canada Post announced a loss of $490 million in the first half of 2024 alone.
See it in the newspaper
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