When the 20th Century dawned, workers in Canada's Post Office had already begun to organize. It was a very different kind of organizing than what is occurring at the end of the 20th Century, and it was within a very different kind of post office.

Then, Canada's Post Office was viewed as the fundamental communications link connecting a vast, but sparsely populated country, and the only communications link for settlers and people in rural areas. Government viewed the Post Office as an important building block in the development of the nation.

The federal government also viewed national interests and business interests as identical. It saw the Post Office as a necessary publicly-funded part of an infrastructure for private development because it was far too costly for private enterprise to provide.

The mixing of government and business interests was expressed in other ways, notably in patronage appointments. Far from viewing patronage as a form of corruption, government saw paying off its business friends as an important way to promote business interests and national development. In the Post Office, as in other government departments, patronage was a fact of life until the rise of the unions in the mid-1960's.


THE FIRST POSTAL WORKER ASSOCIATIONS

It is not surprising that the first organization of postal workers was that of Railway Mail Clerks in 1889. Most of the mail was moved by rail, and much of it was sorted on moving trains by railway workers. Railway mail clerks were part of the movement to organize among railway workers that began in the 1880's.

But the Canadian Railway Mail Federation, despite its national sounding name, was a fragmented, regional organization and was rendered ineffective within a few years of its birth. Such problems as gas-lit and stove-heated postal cars (making them death traps in the event of a wreck), or the exacting skill levels required (railway mail clerks had to score 97% on their annual exam, while postal clerks passed with 90%) were not successfully addressed by the CRMF.

A more permanent organization was the Federated Association of Letter Carriers (FALC), emerging in 1891. It survived until 1966, when it became the Letter Carriers Union of Canada (LCUC).

Like many early unions, FALC began as a 'benevolent society,' with members paying dues to provide themselves and their families with financial protection in case of industrial accidents, illness, death or unemployment. FALC's first Constitution forbade it 'to interfere in any way with the management of the post offices, or with the hours or the pay of the carriers.' Despite this restriction, by 1900, local 'Branches' were including on the agenda such matters as salary, monthly income, holidays and uniforms.

Of course, postal workers in all the early organizations didn't make demands or file grievances. They politely brought their issues to the attention of the government.

The first postal clerks' association was formed locally in Vancouver in 1911. It soon added branches in the Atlantic, and by 1917, the Dominion Postal Clerks Association (DPCA) had branches across the country. Somewhat earlier, in 1902, a postmasters organization was founded, forerunner to the rurally-based Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association currently affiliated to the CLC.


POST OFFICE WORKING CONDITIONS AND EARLY STRIKES

When one looks at the working conditions prevailing during this period, its no wonder the postal associations soon tired of begging and petitioning for improvements. Post office workers often worked 60 to 70 hour work weeks with no overtime provisions.

If a train was late, postal clerks might have come to work in the middle of the night. Letter carriers were forced to wait around until the mail was ready for delivery. At Christmas, the work day had no limit. And for this, they received very poor wages.

Post office workers, especially those in FALC, became the civil service militants. Both FALC and DCPA affiliated to the Trades and Labour Congress (TLC), forerunner of the present day CLC. In the West, the influence of the One Big Union (OBU) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) pushed post office workers' organizations in a radical direction.

These circumstances came to a head in 1918, when FALC, after failing to convince the government to appoint a conciliation board to establish regulated collective agreement conditions, called a strike. It was strongest in the West, Toronto and Hamilton. By the end of the 10-day strike, letter carriers, clerks, railway mail clerks and porters (now called mailhandlers) were all on strike west of the Great Lakes.

This first national civil service strike ended with a huge victory. Postal workers won a 44-hour week, overtime pay, salary increases, no discrimination against strikers and a Civil Service Commission of Inquiry into working conditions at the Post Office. The federal government had been caught utterly off guard.

The strike unified western postal clerks and letter carriers. They were unhappy with the early return to work of their compatriots in Central Canada and their national organizations (also in Central Canada) who had returned to work earlier. They formed the Amalgamated Postal Workers of Canada (APWC). Under the leadership of Victoria's Chris Sivertz, a socialist, trade unionist, founder of FALC and the second President of the B.C. Federation of Labour, APWC attempted to organize a national organization for all post office workers. Later it transformed itself into the Amalgamated Civil Servants of Canada open to all government workers and was a precursor to the present Public Service Alliance of Canada. APWC members in the Winnipeg area fully participated in the Winnipeg general strike of 1919, and 700 were fired and denied their pension, with only 100 later rehired.

In response to APWC, the FALC and DCPA leaders set up a loose federation entitled the Canadian Federation of Post Employees which barred members of the western-based APWC.

This division in no small measure led to the failure of a strike called by the CFPE in 1924. Called in response to an imposed salary cut, the strike was limited to eastern cities, with the APWC refusing to participate. The strike was poorly organized and ended in defeat. The government rehired the striking workers, but only at the starting employee's rate of $85.00 per month, with some strikers bumped to part-time by workers who crossed the picket lines. This bitter failure ended post office militancy for many years.


REVIVAL OF ACTIVISM

During the intervening years until after World War II, many events occurred involving post office workers. Gradually, FALC and the Canadian Postal Clerks Association (CPEA - the new organization representing inside postal workers) rebuilt national organizations. FALC, CPEA and the Railway Mail Clerks Federation formed the Postal Workers Brotherhood to present a united front to government in 1944.

However, it was not until the massive growth of the public sector following World War II, the extension of the mandatory dues check-off deducted from the organizations' members for the use by the associations, and the sharp drop off of post office workers' wages in comparison with other workers in the post-war period that the struggle for real unions and the right to collective bargaining began in earnest.

Wage freezes and paltry increases in the 1950's and 60's and the continuing erosion of working conditions were clearly leading toward an explosion. Many postal workers were inspired, first by the 'work-to-rule' campaign and then the successful all-out strike of British postal workers in 1962-1964.

The year 1965 was a turning point, a defining moment, in the history of post office workers. In July, the government announced in proposed legislation a rejection of the right to strike for government workers and a wage increase less than half of the unions' bottom line. The Postal Workers Brotherhood refused to endorse any action beyond a 'work-to-rule' campaign in response. This was the final straw for FALC and CPEA local activists.

Local leaders of both organizations in Montreal and Vancouver called a strike in defiance of both the Postal Workers Brotherhood and the Canadian Labour Congress. They were quickly joined by office workers in Toronto, Hamilton and other locations. It was a demonstration of determination and unity taking Lester Pearson's government completely by surprise.

The strike lasted for two weeks in Montreal, and a shorter period in the other locations. The immediate results of the strike included:

~ wage increases

~ no reprisals against strikers

~ a Royal Commission into working conditions, headed by Judge Montpetit

~ the inclusion of the right to strike in the new federal public sector labour legislation

~ leaders of all three Postal Workers Brotherhood unions failing to back the strike lost their positions

Most importantly, postal workers gained new confidence in their collective ability to make changes through strong, militant unions. This was reflected in the establishment in 1965 of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and in 1966 of the Letter Carriers Union of Canada (LCUC). The modern era of labour resistance in Canada's Post Office had been ushered in.


AUTOMATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

The advent of collective bargaining, as opposed to collective begging, resulted in big changes in the unions. Some changes were rooted in new workplace development and were not achieved without difficulty.

Initially, for example, the male-dominated work force in CUPW strenuously resisted the inclusion of part-timers, most of them women, into the union. While the union was forced to include them in order to be certified for bargaining in 1967, it was not until 1975 that part-timers were included in the same collective agreement as full-timers.

Although CUPW and LCUC were separate unions, they bargained together from 1967 to 1975 under the Council of Postal Unions bargaining unit. Together the unions fought for, and won, the Rand Formula in a three-week strike in 1968. And in 1970, rotating strikes won overtime provisions after eight hours for letter carriers and a joint committee to look into the effects of new technology being introduced by the Post Office.

But storm clouds were building, originating from big changes in the Post Office. The large post-war increase in commercial mail into a postal system whose structure was hopelessly incapable of meeting the challenge, combined with growing labour militancy led to ambivalence about the role of the Post Office by the government. It was less and less seen as a nation-building instrument and more as a political problem. One Postmaster General (Eric Kierans) did attempt to transform the Post Office into a commercially-oriented Crown Corporation with a massive but planned investment in automated equipment. But he was unsuccessful, and the government instead introduced the new letter sorting automated equipment in a piece-meal fashion, creating huge problems on the work floor and riding rough-shod over the union.

Resulting labour tension exploded in 1974, when the unions were unable to stop the introduction of a new classification of machine coders at a much lower rate of pay. A 15-day 'illegal' strike by CUPW and LCUC occurred over the coder issue, resulting in the reclassification of coders to the same as manual sorters.

This struggle was only the first of many to come over automation. Moreover, the growing problems with automation for inside workers created strains in CUPW's relationship with LCUC, whose membership had far less exposure to the difficulties attendant on the introduction of new technology. In 1975, CUPW sought, and was granted, the right to a separate bargaining certificate.


THE UNIONS APART

Although LCUC and CUPW retained separate bargaining certificates until 1989, the unions worked together on numerous issues, including the campaign to transform the Post Office into a Crown Corporation in order to bring postal workers under more favourable labour legislation (the Canada Labour Code), and later the public campaigns to ensure a universal, service-oriented post office as government increasingly moved to commercialization and privatization and away from the notion of retaining Canada Post as a public service.

The late 70's and 80's were dominated by relentless workplace labour conflicts and, most prominently in the case of CUPW, a determination that only collective worker action could prevent the loss of the gains postal workers had made.

In 1975, a 42-day strike by CUPW, led by CUPW National President Joe Davidson, resulted in improvements for inside workers in establishing a fairer disciplinary procedure and, most importantly, guarantees on employment, classification, pay, retraining and other items when technological change was introduced.

Within months, however, the federal government reneged on its agreement, using loopholes in the Public Service Staff Relations Act. And when CUPW members went on a legal strike in October of 1978, the federal government introduced legislation making the strike illegal after one day. This was to be only the first instance of a growing trend by the federal government to override the right of workers to strike with back-to-work legislation. Four out of eight rounds of collective bargaining have ended with such legislation since 1978.

CUPW members in 1978 defied the back-to-work order for 10 days, despite the objections of the CLC leadership. The CUPW leaders were charged criminally, and CUPW President Jean-Claude Parrot was imprisoned for refusing to order postal workers back to work.

But the membership's unexpected defiance caused the government to back away from such a response for several years. In 1980, CUPW made major advances, especially around health and safety, in an agreement reached without a strike. And in 1981, after another 42-day strike, CUPW successfully resisted employer rollbacks and won 17 weeks paid maternity leave (first in the federal public sector) and other improvements, including protection from closed circuit TV.

During this period, LCUC, under the leadership of National President Robert McGarry, was also able to resist demands for concessions and improvements to workload structuring systems, by showing that LCUC members, as well, were prepared to use the strike weapon, if necessary.

The year 1981 was also notable for the success of the postal unions' long joint campaign to turn the Post Office into a Crown Corporation. The Canada Post Corporation Act, proclaimed in October, listed its mandates as financial self-sufficiency, improved services and improved labour-management relations. Much of the unions' struggle since has been to pressure successive governments, increasingly prone to limit the public service function of the Post Office, to implement the mandates provided under the Act.

Wage controls in the early 80's prevented collective bargaining, but in the first rounds of bargaining following controls, collective agreements were reached without striking. But a privatization agenda by the Tory government, including the closure and franchising of rural post offices and retail outlets in urban areas, included a strategy in the late 80's to cripple the unions in Canada Post.

In 1987, LCUC was forced to strike to defend existing contractual benefits, and for the first time in a federal jurisdiction, strike breakers (scabs) were used across the country. Despite the resulting, sometimes violent confrontations, LCUC members stood their ground. A few months later, when CUPW similarly was forced to strike, scabs were used again, and back-to-work legislation with draconian penalties for defiance was passed. It was a formula to be repeated in the 1991 CUPW strike.


THE UNIONS TOGETHER

In 1988, following a review of bargaining units in the Canada Post, the Canadian Labour Relations Board (CLRB) decided to merge the existing five urban postal operations bargaining units into one viable unit. In practice, this meant that CUPW members, LCC members, maintenance workers represented by the Union of Postal Communications workers (affiliated to PSAC) and electronic technicians represented by the IBEW were to be in one union. In January of 1989, CUPW, in a very close vote over LCUC, won the certification.

The transition phase to unity was not without pain. But the crisis involving Canada Post's future as a public service, similar pressures facing postal administrations globally, and a climate of fierce employer/government attacks on workers in the Post Office have promoted a healing of the differences.

In our first negotiations as one union, the Tory government continued the troubling trend to denying the right to strike, again employing scabs - although the union was able to reach a negotiated settlement in 1992, despite the 1991 back-to-work legislation.

Initially, the election of a new federal government in 1993 appeared for a while to slow down the mad dash to profitability and deregulation at the expense of service to the public in Canada Post. The Liberals, responding to public pressure, imposed a moratorium on the closure of rural post offices. And in 1995, CUPW achieved a collective agreement without a strike, including job security, restrictions on contracting out work and even job creation initiatives.

Problems for the union mounted, however, with the release of the Liberal government Mandate Review headed by George Radwanski. Although the Review rejected privatization of Canada Post, it called on CPC to limit itself to the core work of letter delivery covered by the exclusive privilege clause in the CPC Act. The Liberals responded by unceremoniously firing 10,000 part-time admail delivery workers - and handing over its unaddressed admail business to the private sector.

This was the largest single lay-off in Canada's history. These lower paid unionized workers, for the most part, have been unable to find re-employment. CUPW, although it resisted, was able only to negotiate a severance package on their behalf.