TRURO - Staff shortages at Canada Post are resulting in mail not going out on time, says a union official who believes the corporation should be in hiring mode, not cutting hours.
"There has been three walks in that building in the last few months where the mail remained in this building because they did not have the staff to send it out," said Bobbi Jo Brown, secretary treasurer for the Truro local of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). That included some mail contracted to go out on Dec. 28, she said.
"It did not start getting processed and delivered out of that building until the new year," Brown said. "It sat there."
Her reference to the cutting of hours came in response to an article published by the Truro Daily News last week in which Canada Post spokeswoman Denise Corra said declining mail volumes and revenues are prompting proposed reductions in rural retail operations, both locally and across the country.
But Brown said any such cuts will lead to a reduced work force and ultimately reduced customer service, despite any assurances to the contrary.
"They say they are going to cut hours but not services. While that's understandable, what are they going to do with those hours? Does that mean Londonderry is going to be closed and absorbed by Great Village and removed from the community? Does that mean Belmont is going to be closed and absorbed by Debert and removed out of that community?" Brown asked.
"Absolutely not," said Corra, who added Canada Post is not entertaining plans to change existing hours of operations or eliminate any postal outlets.
"There would be no change to our hours of operation at any office," she said, regarding a proposal to reduce some worker hours.
Talks on that regard are scheduled to begin next month.
"We would not be closing offices. What we're doing is we're adjusting scheduled hours," she said. "We're not by any stretch closing offices."
As far as mail not being delivered on time because of staff shortages, Corra said that information was news to her.
"We're not aware of this, by the way," she said, adding that she would investigate the claim. "This would be a surprise."
As far as the proposed staffing cutbacks are concerned, Brown said given the "hundreds of millions of dollars" Canada Post has profited every year for the past 15 years, there is no reason more of that money can't be invested back into communities as a form of customer service.
"As far as the union standpoint is, we have so many postal outlets and so many little areas that they're quite beneficial to those areas," Brown said. "There's things they could be adding to those services. Not just supplying stamps, not just supplying postage and not just being a place for people to go to pick up parcels."
With 6,500 postal outlets across Canada, including many in rural areas, she said Canada Post could take the lead of other countries in being more creative in the services it offers.
As examples, Brown suggested that rural outlets could better serve their as communities by doubling for such services as providing public Internet access, for banking, bill payments, etc.
And carriers could also be partnered with local social service agencies to keep an eye on elderly mail patrons, she said, as is done in the United States and France.
"It may not be the role right now but why can't it be?" she said, given the number of times mail carriers stop at their patron's doors.
"Instead of cutting those hours," she said, "they could learn from these other countries that are doing different things."
How about a reduction in pay to subsidize the additional carriers. It recently came to my attention that a full time union mail carrier starts at $48,000 per year. How can this be justified? The carriers I know have no post secondary education, yet they start out at a higher salary than most university graduates.