THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER REAL POSTAL STORY The Canadian Union of Postal Workers launched an educational campaign on Valentine’s Day to inform the public of both the daily problems faced by postal workers in the Post Office and contract issues that CUPW is fighting for. The president of the Labour Council of Metropolitan Toronto, Sam Fox, recently re- viewed in the Globe and Mail some of those problems and the events leading up to the CUPW strike last fall. By now, except for the oc- casional rumblings we see on , the Letters to the Editor pages, the recent postal workers strike has receded in our ” memories. But since our mail is moving again and the irrita- tion of not receiving our bills daily is no longer uppermost in our minds, perhaps its time to think about what happened and whys *: This review is crucial because the events of that strike have implications that go far beyond those. of a specific labour-management dispute. As a trade unionist (and a non-postal employee) it is dis- turbing to note that the govern- ment has been successful in easting the union the Canadian Union of Postal Workers — as the villain of the piece when in fact the root causes of the problem- rest squarely with Post Office man- agement. s PUBLICITY CAMPAIGN A publicity campaign costing hundreds of thousands of dol- lars of taxpayers’ money had been mounted against CUPW. Two special laws, passed with- in a six-month period, denied postal workers the right to strike. Threats of mass firings, RCMP raids on their major of- fices across the country, arrest of their entire national leader- ship, RCMP interrogation of their hired staff members in their homes, firings and thousands of suspensions across the country — these are just some of the dramatic events surrounding the recent mail strike. : The rationale for these vin- dictive actions, they would have us believe, is that Canada’s 23,000 postal workers are a bunch of wild-eyed young subversive hell-bent on WORKERS THE VICTIM Far from being the cause of the Post Office’s problems, postal workers are in a very real sense its victims. Two weeks ago Postmaster- General Gille Lamontagne, who is the architect of the cur- rent crackdown on the postal workers, was forced to admit in the House of Commons that the Post Office’s poorly planned and administered mechanization program — not the workers — was the main reason for the deterioration in the mail service: the machines either don’t function or func- tion badly. But poor service is only one result of the Post Office’s too hastily implemented mechanization program. Cost is another. As taxpayers we have already paid out more than $1 billion for machines and the mechanization pro- gram is one of the major rea- _ sons why the department has a $600 million annual deficit. Finally, the mechanization program has meant a host of for the workers, from health hazards increased destruction. According to the purveyors of this image, postal workers are underworked and overpaid anarchists respon- sible for our ever-worsening postal service and who deserve everything they are getting. This is a malicious distortion The average postal worker is quite representative of the Canadian work force. He or she ranges from a kid fresh out of school to a 60-year-old woman with half a dozen grand- children. According to the gov- ernment’s own figures, the average postal worker at an automated machine handles 1,800 letters an hour, or one letter every two seconds — that’s hardly underworked. - And even after 30 years of ser- vice, their top wage rate is $6.29 an hour or roughly $13,100 a year — hardly overpaid. 3 ae — ao satisfactory - labour-manage- ment relationship than the Post Office. An objective examination of this record points squarely to the fact that the attitude of management has been one of confrontation — of making the grievance procedure as difficult and as costly as possible. Because of the many problems involved in the Post Office and particularly those arising from technological change, some 46,000 griev- ances were filed between the time the agreement was signed in December 1975 and June 30, 1978. In the Toronto Post Office only 8 per cent of all grievances were settled in the first step of the grievance pro- cedure. During the period from December, 1975, to January, 1978, the union won 26.1 per cent of all cases referred by it to adjudication (arbitration). It lost 15.1 per cent. The re- mainder of 58.8 per cent were conceded by management — prior to a hearing, but after many months from the time they were referred to ad- judication. There was obviously a deli- berate policy on the part of management to refuse to settle cases within the early steps of the grievance procedure, and ~to finally concede the cases Federal Employees’ only, after many months or when the case was slated for a hearing and management was likely to lose: In a case called O’Toole, the union grieved that overtime should be given to regular em- ployees rather than casuals. The management agreed: to make the O’Toole case a test case for some 27,000 other grievances. The case was won in adjudication by the union. Management appealed the decision to the Federal Court, where the union was upheld. Management sought leave to appeal the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, but was not successful. : At this point management advised the union that the other grievances in this area would have to be adjudicated individually, making a mockery of its ‘“‘test casé.”’ On Feb. 14, 1978, two em- ployees from the Toronto Post Office were fired and the case went to adjudication. I do not wish to deal with the merits of this particular case but to il- lustrate the tactics employed by management. There were 25 days of hearings. Manage- ment called 38 witnesses and took 17 days to present its case. It insisted on a transcript and the union had to share in the cost. There were more than 3,000 pages of evidence, more than 2,000 of which were taken up by management in evidence of cross-examination. The cost to the public in this case ran into tens of thousands of dollars. The cost to the union was equally heavy. The deci- sion finally came down on Dec. 8, 1978, upholding the original decision. This kind of judicial overkill cannot be accidental — it is clearly designed to make adjudication so cumber- some, and expensive that it will defeat the very purpose of peaceful settlements’ of grievances. One of the major sources of worker dissatisfaction in the Post Office is the noise level. The International Labour Or- ganization, the government of Alberta, and the U.S. Office of Com- pensation holds a rating of 85 decibels to be dangerous. A study done on the U.S.- Postal Service in 1968 found 80 decibels is a desireable limit in post offices where similar technology is used. A reading of 75 decibels in normal speech frequencies means workers often speak loudly to com- municate over a distance of one foot. But the Canadian Post Office has a maximum noise level of 92 decibels over an eight-hour shift. This level is a danger to health but the Post Office will not agree to lower the maximum. Certain kinds of new equip- ment in the Post Office have resulted in work of a highly repetitive, monotonous nature. One of these machines is called a General Desk Suite. An operator sits at the machine and letters automatically drop into a glass case. The operator, who punches an. area code on the letter, is required to key- board punch 1,800 letters an hour and maintain a 99.5 per eent level of accuracy. So mind-boggling is this work that it is recognized that an em- Just look at him, driving around wasting gas. ployee should be rotated off this keyboard every 2% hours. Nevertheless, this under- standing has been violated constantly and in some cases employees have been kept on this machine for periods up to an entire eight-hour shift. Rather than admit their own policies are the principal cause of the deterioration in service and labour relations in the Post Office, the government decided to use sophisticated and expensive techniques to . convince the public the workers were at fault. Once the public was up in arms, the problem could be ‘‘solved’’ by cracking down on CUPW. ed) ~ OBEYED THE LAW ae — CUPW followed the law. Under the ‘terms of the Public Service Staff Relations Act it began negotiating for a con- tract in April 1977. and also under the terms of that act it, ~ like other unions, had a choice of one of two routes to resolve disputes that might arise: con- ciliation with the right to strike or the compulsory arbitration route. In April, 1977, postal workers legally chose conciliation with the right to strike. The union tabled its demands at the start of negotiations. However, gov- ernment negotiators refused to reply for more than 18 months. Meanwhile, the government totalled and exaggerated the cost of the union’s initial monetary demands and used the figures for an ad campaign. Its purpose was twofold. First, since the cost was high, it would give the impression that postal workers’ demands were unreasonable. Second, it would bury the real issues, such as technological change and the abuse of disciplinary powers, that the government refused to negotiate. What the ads neglected to tell the public was that it is customary in collective bar- gaining for the union to present high initial demands and the employer to make the lowest possible first offer. They then bargain back and forth until they arrive at a compromise. Since the union had received no. offers, no negotiations of any type could result. ES ~ GOVERNMENT POSITION Pe The inevitable consequence of such an intractable govern- mental position was a strike. The strike was barely a few days old when the government pushed through legislation re- moving the right of postal workers to negotiate and to strike — bad faith bargaining with a vengeance. If, after a group of workers follow the law, they can so easily be stripped of their rights and be subjected to threats of job loss and other penalties, arrests and police interrogation, then the whole concept of democratic rights and freedoms and the rule of law in our society is thrown into question. Prime Minister Pierre Tru- deau said. last August that freedom to bargain collective- ly and to strike are basic and that they can only be put aside when “‘the exercise of this freedom tends to destroy society.”’ The postal workers legal strike posed no threat of chaos to this society but the government’s decision to arbi- trarily remove their rights does. ‘ If the rule of law is to mean anything, postal workers, regardless of how they farein a popularity poll, must be ' granted the same rights and protections as the rest of us. (Conn ee ee) OTTAWA — The unemploy- ment picture worsened in the new year with 977,000 persons - reported out of work. in Janu- ary, compared with 870,000 in December, reported Statistics Canada. : ; The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate remained at its December level of 8.1 per cent. ss Young people were hit hardest by the lack of available work. The federal agency said the unemployment rate among those 15 to 19 years old was 17.7 per cent on a seasonally-ad- justed basis.