During the last round of negotiations, CUPW and CPC agreed to Appendix DD that includes health and safety training for all members in the urban collective agreement. Money for this training was set aside - where is it? It is not being used for training - what is it being used for?

The collective agreement states that the "parties will work together promptly and reasonably in order to achieve the objectives of this appendix". The Union has worked incredibly hard and made a great deal of resources available to this training.

The training was delivered once in November 2004. Canada Post saw the high level of experience, knowledge and competence that the CUPW facilitators had. The Union believes that this frightened and panicked Canada Post, the CUPW facilitators were actually going to be training members about what their rights are! Was Canada Post shocked that we actually knew what we were talking about?

The Union thought that the course was satisfactory but Canada Post wanted a complete rewrite. Canada Post did not want to talk about contractual and legal rights of postal workers. Canada Post has since been playing games and attempting to hijack the training.

Canada Post has chosen to ignore the Union in the further development in the health and safety training. Is Canada Post writing a CPC course that will provide lectures on how we are a team and everything would be wonderful; injuries and illnesses would decrease if workers would only wear the proper shoes, work faster, lift correctly and never use sick leave? Are they going to put all the blame on the worker for injuries that occur? Will they insult us by attempting to silence our concerns with pizza and donuts?

It has been two years since the signing of the collective agreement, the health and safety training could be well underway, but it is not. In the meantime, the injury rate at Canada Post is increasing. Is Canada Post competing for first place in national injury rates? Proper, not token, health and safety training is urgently required for our Members.

Canada Post is obligated to consult with the Union to develop training that BOTH parties agree to and the time for that consultation is now!

If Canada Post tries to conduct the health and safety training referred to in Appendix DD in your Local,

DO NOT PARTICIPATE!

Contact your local, regional and national union as soon as possible.