After seven months of talks, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Canada Post have yet to reach an agreement, and union members could strike as early as tomorrow night. CUPW has amended its demands as recently as this week, asking for more modest wage increases than it had previously.
While we support the postal workers’ use of collective action to maintain the quality of their work conditions, there’s also the question of who will be affected by the looming strike. Some see it as a “minor inconvenience”, or even a temporary break from junk mail. But what about freelancers? Many of us receive the a lot, or even all, of our income through the mail. The strike also poses a threat to magazines that have eager subscribers who’ve already paid for their next issue. What to do with stacks of magazines awaiting distribution?
Based on Tweets about the strike so far, its effects on Canadian publications and the people who create them would amount to more than a “hassle”:
2 comments
All of my income is freelance – every penny of it – and all of it arrives via Canada Post, so a strike has to fuck me just a little bit, no matter how proactive I am. I can ill afford the two hours (minimum) it takes to “pop” downtown each time a cheque is ready for p/u. Every publication I’ve contact so far has not had a contingency plan in place in case of a strike. I’ve had to explicitly tell them not to mail cheques out this week. (Duh!) That said, I support the strike because as a freelancer I know what it means to get fucked over by corporate interests.
Online Interac transfer, anyone?