Saturday November 30, 2024 / 9:10 am | VICTORIA, BC [Last updated 3:54 pm]
Socioeconomic analysis by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
This holiday season Canada Post strike coming at the worst possible time for small businesses, consumers and the overall economy highlights a long list of what’s wrong with the crown corporation’s business model.
For sure, there are some valuable services provided by Canada Post. People like to get things by mail. And in rural areas they are sometimes the only government-affiliated office in town.
But it’s almost as if the crown corporation has become a holding tank of employment opportunity for people who want to stay in one place.
That is a big-picture statement about the workforce model in Canada. Having jobs for people seems to be more of a goal than whether their jobs are part of an economic system that actually serves the best interests of the employees, the company and in this case the country.
Postal workers went to the picket lines starting November 15. That so many people are nearly completely unaffected by this current postal strike now stretched past two weeks shows how unnecessary the current Canada Post system has become for many Canadian households, organizations and businesses.
The shift away from reliance on Canada Post as the main delivery system in Canada began long ago in the mid-1980s. That’s when courier companies emerged as an alternative to postal strikes of the day. While couriers may be more expensive than putting a stamp on an envelope, new courier businesses quickly realized that businesses would pay the higher cost for the convenience and assurance that a letter or parcel would be delivered quickly (sometimes within the hour) and directly.
A further shift away from reliance on Canada Post as the main delivery system in Canada happened when online digital technologies enabled email and the Internet for delivery of direct messages and the downloading of files like bills and statements. That started in the mid-1990s and is now pretty much the norm for business-to-business and business-to-consumer relations.
When online shopping became a thing in the early 2000s, slippage for Canada Post began its slide. While Canada Post has generally remained the cheaper shipping option for parcel delivery when shopping online, consumers are going to once again prove that they can live without Canada Post.
So long as the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) uses the blunt tool of labour strikes, they are going to keep driving the corporation into the dust. The few remaining sectors of the economy that do heavily rely on Canada Post (i.e. mostly small businesses and their customers for parcel shipping) may be experiencing the proverbial ‘final straw’.
Consumers are heading to retail stores this holiday shopping season instead of ordering online so that they have their gift purchases in time for Christmas. Anyone still getting bills and statements by postal mail will finally be shifting to online-only.
Broken business model:
But really the broken model is that of Canada Post itself. For 2023, the Corporation recorded a loss before tax of $748 million, compared to a loss before tax of $548 million in 2022.
The corporation says it can’t afford to pay full-time workers to also deliver on weekends and wants to hire part-time workers to do that. That would presumably help with the parcel delivery side of things.
That’s where the union playing hardball against the outdated corporate model (by saying no to part-time workers) is also about protecting their old model of the standard workplace or working conditions.
Some thoughts on reshaping Canada Post:
Most of these concepts are based on common sense and creative business acumen:
- Specialized use of postal mail such as the delivery of legal documentation such as passports may be one of the few remaining key needs for postal mail delivery.
- People don’t send Christmas cards much anymore. Most families and businesses have shifted to digital messaging in that regard.
- Householders and businesses who do rely on mail-forwarding by Canada Post (a costly service nowadays) will want to be requesting an extension on their paid service (which can be purchased for four to six months, or a year), to cover the missing weeks/months that mail will be delayed by this strike.
- The entire Canada Post model needs a rethink. Services like postal banking are an aberration of the well-established Canadian banking system and might be something to cut.
- Dropping door-to-door service in older neighbourhoods now needs to meet its end. The community mailbox system is well-established in new residential and commercial areas (many new homes don’t even have a mailbox outside the front door anymore). Phasing out door-to-door could be achieved in relatively short order (within a year or two), saving a substantial amount of money in wages.
- Standalone mailboxes for sending mail could probably be pared back; community mailboxes include that feature. Equipment and maintenance costs are the key saving there, as well as the stop-and-start postal truck costs.
- A lot of mail gets misdelivered or not delivered at all. People are no longer aware of how the postal system works and their obligation to forward or return mail. Canada Post needs to reconnect with Canadians.
- The Canada Post centres that are within retail stores have adopted some customer-service models that are favourable to consumers. That’s another clue as to the direction of the modernized Canada Post.
A project for the federal government:
The federal government needs to get creative here. The point is not to put people out of work but to shift their work to services that are cost-effective and sought-after by businesses and consumers.
Specializing in the parcel delivery sector is one such area. But some broader version as to new services that the country might need (e.g. AI management, community centre operations) could see current CUPW workers shifted to work for which cost centres make economic and functional sense.
It seems to be time for Canada Post to bite the bullet and split its missions at the very least into urban and rural, not to mention on-the-ground vs online digital. The need for services in urban and rural vary greatly. Any regular business would automatically adapt to providing the right services for each jurisdiction.
And who’s to say door-to-door postal delivery workers wouldn’t mind doing without the danger of attacks by dogs. On-the-ground postal workers claim an adjunct role of getting to know their neighourhoods — if mail piles up or they don’t see someone for a long period of time that can flag a problem.
But Canada Post needs a bird’s eye view of where their Canada-wide services are needed in the digital age — on the ground and in cyber realms. This seems to be a match-up required with the Ministry of Citizens’ Services to give this a rethink.
===== ABOUT THE WRITER:
Island Social Trends Editor Mary P Brooke has been covering business and political news for decades.
===== RELATED:
- Peninsula Co-op rebate cheques delayed by postal strike (November 30, 2024)
- Canada Post suspends delivery on Vancouver Island due to snow (January 17, 2024)
- Langford is on the Canada Post map! (May 24, 2023)
- When mail gets misdelivered (April 20, 2022)
- Langford steps up to support Canada Post local community mailbox cleanup (Sept 3, 2021)
- Canada Post community mailbox management & municipal responsibilities (July 17, 2021)
- Post-pandemic social anxiety in dogs leads to incidents for Canada Post delivery agents (July 17, 2021)
- Canada Post employees require safety around dogs (July 12, 2021)
- Canada Post on relocating retail outlet within Westshore Town Centre (April 19, 2021)
- COVID pushes Canada Post outlet to new location in Langford (April 16, 2021)
- Canada Post: ultimate deadline Dec 18 for holiday parcels, priority, Xpresspost (December 17, 2020)
- People flocking to Canada Post for holiday season (December 11, 2020)
- Canada Post experiences continued delays with parcel deliveries during pandemic (May 26, 2020)
- Canada Post: through rain, snow, sleet, hail or pandemic (March 14, 2020)
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