CUPW is reviewing in detail the changes that Canada Post has in mind for letter carriers in their “Modern Post.”

Starting mid-summer, CUPW’s Delivery Group has met weekly with Canada Post.

CUPW delegations went to the United Kingdom and Norway, where mechanized sequencing of mail to point of call has already started.

And we’ve hosted visitors from the U.S. National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), who have faced sequencing since the US Postal Service (USPS) introduced it in the early 1990s.

So what have we learned so far?

• Canada Post expects to have machines, not letter carriers, sort 90% of letter-sized mail to the line-of-delivery.
  
  
• Canada Post proposes that letter carriers share their A62 sortation case with another letter carrier – the two letter carriers will have different start times.
  
  
• All mail (addressed, unaddressed, Personal Contact Items) will be brought to the case (or staged at the depot dock, ready for loading) by Letter Carrier Assistants. Canada Post wants to take away the time for letter carriers to obtain mail.
  
  
• Machines or manual sorters will collate multiple sets of householders for each point of call. Canada Post wants to take away our householder time allowance.
  
  
• Most letter carriers (about 85%) will be motorized – and, in addition to delivering mail, will deliver parcels and clear red boxes and Retail Postal Outlets.  Most residential areas will be delivered park-and-loop.
  
  
• On the street, letter carriers will be expected to handle – at the same time and for each call – three separate bundles of mail:

• Canada Post’s proposed delivery methods will add extra work to the delivery of householders. Canada Post refuses to add any time to account for that extra work.
  
  
• Postal workers in other countries tell us that handling the multiple bundles of mail and dealing with the machine’s missorts take extra time.
  
  
• In all, Canada Post intends to cut more than one hour from the time allowed for letter carriers to handle and deliver an average day’s mail to the average letter carrier route.
  
  

CUPW is reviewing Canada Post’s proposed changes. We have told management they must fix the adverse effects that their proposed new work methods create.

The Union is closely examining the new work methods to make sure that:

• The health and safety impacts are understood, and problems fixed.
  
  
• The new time standards applied to letter carriers account for all the additional work in Canada Post’s proposed work methods.
  
  

Canada Post intends to start its Modern Post experiment in Winnipeg in 2010.  Since many of the Modern Post initiatives are new and untested, CUPW told Canada Post that Winnipeg should be a pilot project, similar to the pilot projects of other postal administrations.  CUPW expects that important changes would come from the evaluation of a Winnipeg pilot.

Article 29.02 of the Urban Operations collective agreement requires that Canada Post “…eliminate all injustices to or adverse effects on employees and any denial of their contractual or legal rights…” which might result from technological changes such as Modern Post.

Stay tuned. Your Union will provide additional information as it becomes available. In the mean time, we encourage you to ask questions, lots of questions, and share any new information with CUPW national office.