Tuesday January 17 2023
Before the peak season lull, the Building Worker Power campaign was moving ahead full force as our eight Regional Organizers visited Locals throughout the country to promote workfloor empowerment, collect contacts and, most importantly, recruit workfloor captains to grow our capacity to fight back against CPC and the government. From October until mid-December, roughly 150 workfloor visits and meetings were conducted and over 2,450 members signed up to receive campaign updates. Considering the little time we’ve been operating and how few Regional Organizers (ROs) we have currently covering such a geographically spread-out membership, the campaign is performing admirably.
Special acknowledgement should be given to our ROs for rising to the challenge of their roles. Prior to these first workfloor visits, most of our ROs did not have experience with public speaking or organizing these kinds of meetings. In many cases, to be the first representative showing up in a National capacity on a workfloor since the 2018 back-to-work legislation and the pandemic is no comfortable thing, as member frustration has accumulated for good reason and craves an outlet. Our ROs have weathered many storms explaining that, yes, the union can do more, but only if we’re collectively willing to get involved in some way to support empowering our own workfloors. Members have predominantly responded well to this honesty and our advocacy to focus on what can be positively done to strengthen CUPW going forward.
January will see our ROs resume their hectic facility tour promoting campaign involvement. Our workfloor organizing training course, designed specifically for this campaign, held a successful first session January 7 in Montreal, with more being offered soon after in other Locals that have expressed interest. Come February, members will receive the latest edition of our National magazine, Perspective. This issue will dig deeper into why this campaign is essential to revitalize our Union so that we can win better conditions for our members, as well as introduce you to the eight activists committed to spreading the good word.
As I stated when first elected to this position, and then again when introducing the BWP campaign a few months later: our Union is only as strong as our members are unified around a goal and organized to achieve that goal. How effective we will be moving forward will be proportional to how much we prepare.
If all we do is talk about the importance of fighting back, but do nothing to resource, recruit and train organizers, then we position ourselves to keep losing. To build adequate organizing capacity to collectively enforce our rights and win better collective agreements, we must be deliberate in our efforts, have all levels of the union constructively collaborating on this campaign, and maintain course.
The RSMC contract extension expires December 31, 2023, with the Urban unit following on January 31, 2024. Canada Post is ready to use the pandemic and market share losses to Amazon as excuses for a full assault on our livelihoods. The only way we’ll be able to stand our ground and make gains through service expansion is wasting no time in building up our forces. Local Executives who either haven’t had campaign visits or are now interested in running the training workshop should immediately contact their RO to schedule as needed. If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to get involved, we need as many workfloor captains as we can get trained to help coordinate our workfloors across Locals and Regions. Contact information and more information on the campaign can be found at https://bwp.cupw.ca/ or via the QR code.
If we really commit ourselves to this project, 2023 will be the year we stop relying on stories of postal workers from long past fighting to substantially improve their working lives and start writing our own.
No struggle, no victory.
In Solidarity,