No one should be fooled if Canada Post is picked as one of the Top 100 Employers for 2010.

Winners of the Top 100 Employers competition will be announced on October 8, 2009. This competition professes to determine which employers offer exceptional workplaces to employees.

You would assume that employees had significant input into a process which decides who provides them with the best workplaces, but the competition makes surveying employees optional. For the most part, managers apply for, and win the Top 100 Employers competition based on all the nice things they say about themselves and what they do in relation to the following eight categories: (1) Physical Workplace; (2) Work Atmosphere & Social; (3) Health, Financial & Family Benefits; (4) Vacation & Time Off; (5) Employee Communications; (6) Performance Management; (7) Training & Skills Development; and (8) Community Involvement.

Last year, Canada Post won the Top 100 Employers competition in spite of an unacceptably high injury rate and an increasingly heavy-handed approach to workplace problems.

The corporation is one of the most dangerous places to work in the federal sector. In the urban operations bargaining unit alone, there were over 8000 injuries in 2008. Over 4000 of these injuries were considered to be disabling.

Instead of focusing on reducing injuries, Canada Post is fixated on absences due to injury and illness. It has hired Manulife Canada to run an attendance management program which, all to often, involves harassing and intimidating workers who are sick or have been injured on the job.

Winning the Top 100 Employers competition doesn’t mean much when winners don’t have to consider basic working conditions and what employees and their representatives have to say about these conditions.

CUPW is calling on Canada Post to improve its performance as an employer by working with employee representatives to find meaningful solutions to workplace problems, especially the high injury rate.

The union acknowledges that Canada Post is a world-class post office and that it has the potential to be a first-class employer, but only if it spends more time on improving labour relations.