Tough times for posties

Wed, December 19, 2007 Edmonton Sun

By Brookes Merritt

A stalemate between Canada Post and overworked St. Albert mail carriers threatens to delay delivery of Christmas packages.

That's unless some issues are resolved in the next few days, says the president of the local postal workers union.

"Workers are being told they'll be fired if they refuse to complete their routes, even though the holiday rush has burdened them with up to 14 hours of work to complete in a 6 1/2-hour workday," Brian Henderson said following a work-to-rule standoff at the St. Albert mail depot Monday.

Eleven mail carriers there insisted on going home at the end of their shifts - after failing to deliver hundreds of pieces of mail during their regular hours.

Henderson said Canada Post squeezes about three hours of free labour out of each carrier per day by holding them to a mail delivery contract based on piece-work, rather than the amount of time it takes to do the job.

"The volume of mail they're required to deliver this time of year is incredible. Forcing them to complete these routes without extra pay ... in my mind, that's corporate theft," he said.

Canada Post spokesman Teresa Williams said carriers aren't being forced to do anything they didn't agree to in their union contract.

"The contract they have now pays these carriers by the route. The contract has no stipulations about the length of time it takes to complete the work, regardless of mail volume or weather conditions," she said.

"But we recognize this is a tough time of year for mail carriers and we're in the process of tweaking the existing contract. The mail is getting out on time and people don't have to worry about major delays."

Henderson said Canada Post's formula for measuring the time it should take to complete a route doesn't account for changes in mail volume -which is highest at Christmas.

He said that's the top complaint of carriers.

"Right now they plug the route into a computer which spits out a time based on the number of mail recipients and the length of the route in kilometres. The system doesn't account for the amount of mail to be delivered on that route suddenly doubling or if a blizzard causes delays.

"If it takes 14 hours near Christmas to do a same job that normally takes six hours, workers are told to get it done for the same pay."

Henderson said carriers can file for overtime every four weeks, but the paperwork "is extremely time consuming and too onerous."