Since so many of these leave the details out.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1542q49wzgo
The union wants a 24% pay increase over the next four years - higher than the 11.5% increase proposed by employer Canada Post.
and
The latest strike comes as the Crown corporation deals with big financial losses of C$3bn since 2016, primarily due to the fact that people are sending fewer letters than before.
In its 2023 annual report, the operator said its financial situation is “unsustainable", and had projected that it will run out of cash unless it borrows C$1bn and refinances its existing debt.
Side note, but I always hate how it’s described as “losses”. No shit providing mail delivery is a service. It’s nice to aim to reduce the cost as much as possible, but when you’re looking at something like Canada where there are countless remote and difficult to reach communities, regular communication and parcel delivery is going to cost money
Now now! What would Capitalism say if it heard you?!
"Ah just let private industry compete. When you have literally hundreds of options, the cream will rise to the top.
Competition is the way of capitalism, so don’t turn your back on it or you’ll have unaffordable scarcity.
The best thing — oh, hang on, it’s the cabal of private corporations. A merger, you say? Glory to the consolidation of wealth! Yeah, of course you can price fix with the rest of the triopoly. It’s called ‘market price.’
As I was saying, the best thing to do would be to layoff the entire staff, sell everything for pennies on the dollar, and leave everything in the trustworthy hands of private enterprise. They’re just better at it."
Can I get an A MEN!!!
Best I got is a Eh men.
Presumably it should be self sufficient, by charging for some services… Remember every letter required paid postage.
If everything competing with it has shift work, no benefits and cheaper vehicles. Then something is wrong with us paying for daily delivery of fliers and given out pensions to a low skill job.
Every letter still requires paid postage. The problem is, if you set the cost to be actual cost incurred, then anywhere remote or rural will be ridiculously expensive, and no one will send stuff, making the packages/letters that do need to be sent even more expensive, and creating a death spiral. It’s no different than a million other public services that we pay for despite not using (public rec centers are sponsored in part by taxes despite charging admission/membership fees, daycare facilities get partially paid by the government, universities get some tax money despite the crazy fees we pay, etc).
But regarding the pension, I disagree - I believe that every job should be sufficient for someone to live comfortably on - why do we have jobs if someone can’t live on them? And the reason they pay well and have pensions is because they’re unionized, aznd have fought for the pay and pension they have.
The problem is, if you set the cost to be actual cost incurred, then anywhere remote or rural will be ridiculously expensive
Well I am not saying each letter, more that the system as a whole needs to be making profit in one area to carry the loss in another… At this point we have way more places to deliver to than people sending regular mail.
I believe that every job should be sufficient for someone to live comfortably on
Looks like Canada post already pays the average or above average and is above living wage in most areas.
Losing almost all the urban Amazon business to Bezos inhouse shipper was a pretty hard blow.
And in the US you can also put outgoing mail in your box and they’ll take it. Super convenient. Why can’t they do that here too since they’re already there?
Community mailboxes do this already.
They did in rural areas 20 years ago. I grew up on a rural road and it was totally a thing to send mail by putting it in the mailbox and raise the flag.
Maybe it’s just a rural thing for people with individual mailboxes, or maybe they stopped doing this, but it was possible a few decades ago.
