The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is set to use its right to strike after 7 months of negotiations have fallen apart.

The Union has been put in this position because of the demands for major rollbacks proposed to them by the Canada Post Corporation. Among the concessions proposed by the employer are a two-tiered wage system which would see new hires receiving nearly $6.00 less than their co-workers, and an elimination of bankable sick time, to be replaced with an inferior 'Short Term Disability plan' (STD).

Under the STD, workers would see their sick time cut in half, with approval of sick leave longer than five days dependent on a third party insurance provider's reccomendations. Additionally, after that sick time is used, individual sick days will not be paid to the worker if they happen to fall ill.

As workers with one of the highest injury rates in the country, the Union finds this unacceptable.

The strike will begin at 11:59 p.m. EDT in Winnipeg (10:59 p.m. CDT).

The Winnipeg local will be on strike for 24 hours, after which the strike will continue in other locations to be announced later.

The purpose of this strike activity is to encourage Canada Post Corporation to abandon their proposals for significant concessions and instead negotiate solutions to the very real problems that are being experienced by 48,000 postal workers.

Winnipeg has been chosen as the location for the first strike activity because it was the first city to be impacted by Canada Post's modernization program. The results have been a sharp deterioration of service to the public as well as a host of health and safety problems experienced by postal workers due to the new work methods and equipment.

CUPW has negotiations demands designed to resolve these problems and wants Canada Post to address them.
 

This release is partially available on the CUPW website.