Canada Post Corporation is 25 years old on October 16, 2006. CUPW does not want to let this day go by without reflecting on the last twenty-five years and planning for the next. The union has prepared a document called Our Vision of the Post Office to help initiate a much-needed public discussion on the future of our public post office.

Your local will distribute this document on October 16th, and some locals will conduct actions or discussions in conjunction with Canada Post's 25th anniversary.

Our vision - a truly public post office

On October 16, 1981, Parliament passed the Canada Post Corporation Act (CPC Act) creating Canada Post as a Crown corporation and mandating it to provide basic customary postal service while improving service, operating on a financially self-sustaining basis and balancing the objectives of the corporation with the needs of its employees, most of them CUPW members.

Unfortunately, it appears that Canada Post has a different understanding of its mandate. Canada Post's president has repeatedly stated that Canada Post is a commercial enterprise and that the corporation has a business mandate.

A great deal has changed in the last quarter century. But has Canada Post become a commercial enterprise or is it a public corporation? What does it need to do to meet the challenges it faces? Canada Post's anniversary gives us an opportunity to address these questions and others. Did we really build our public post office for Canada Post's top 200 customers?
What about the rest of us? The people who built and paid for our public post office. Don't we matter? Haven't CUPW members helped Canada Post profit and grow? Shouldn't management acknowledge this by sharing some of the gains ($199 million in 2005 alone)? Whatever happened to the balance between the objectives of the corporation and the needs of employees?

Negotiations

CUPW is demanding that Canada Post balance its objectives with our needs at negotiations. This is, after all, part of the corporation's legal mandate. The union thinks that Canada Post's 25th anniversary is the perfect time to highlight this aspect of the corporation's mandate and our negotiations demands, especially the demands aimed at preserving and improving public postal service and jobs:

• No to contracting out
• No to private franchises
• Yes to CUPW-staffed public outlets
• Contract in work like combined urban services and highway services
• Extend door-to-door delivery
• Strengthen Appendix T so that the union can contract in work and expand services

Public Campaign

As well, CUPW will spend Canada Post's 25th year campaigning for a universal, public post office that meets the challenges of the next 25 years. The union will:

• Distribute Our Vision of the Post Office and debate it with postal workers and the public
• Raise our concerns about the future of public postal service and jobs with members of Parliament.
• Submit resolutions to town and city councils
• Talk to editorial boards
• Ask newspapers to print CUPW's opinion piece:  Did we build our public post office for 200 customers?

I would like to encourage everyone to participate in actions that your local undertakes on October 16th. And don't forget to vote in the CUPW online poll about investing in public postal service at www.cupw-sttp.org. The poll question is at the bottom right hand side of the website. We want to hear from you.