The Canada Postal Workers Union have started a “Save the Canada Post” campaign to demand the reversal of planned cuts to the postal service. After reading the editorial below it makes a person wonder if Canada Post’s recent plan is nothing more than an attempt to privatize. Deepak Chopra, CEO of Canada Post is the former President of Pitney-Bowes Canada. It has been reported that the proposal to raise the price of stamps to 85 cents is for those buying in bulk, but raising the price to 75 cents is for Pitney-Bowes postage meter users. In the past business owners could not justify leasing a postage meter but with 10 cents in per stamp savings it could make a difference. Pitney-Bowes could see a substantial increase in business thanks to the Canada Post CEO.
Canada Post is not on life support, it is being murdered
It is no secret that Stephen Harper isn’t a big fan of the public sector. So when he needed a new CEO for this crown corporation, he hired the head of the Canada and Latin America division of Pitney Bowes.
For those who are not familiar with Pitney Bowes, they are the largest private mail supply company in the world. They are also a company that specializes in picking up the pieces of privatized postal services. Earlier this year, Pitney Bowes published a study urging the privatization of the United States Postal Service, and have been lobbying heavily to do exactly that.
Now, one of their top bosses is running Canada Post. His predecessor, Moya Greene was also a privatization expert. She oversaw the privatization of CN Rail before coming to Canada Post, but she moved on to the Royal Mail in the UK before she could finish the job here. The Royal Mail has just been privatized.
Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra was not hired to fix the post office; he was hired to destroy it. The simple truth is that the public post office is one of the most valuable assets in the country. It occupies prime real estate in every city in Canada. Its retail network is the largest in the country, with over 6,000 locations. Its distribution network is also the largest in Canada, with thousands of delivery vans and tractor-trailers.
The private sector is salivating at the prospect of getting their hands on this network precisely because of the money they could make with it. But in order to do this, they first need to slash the service and push it over a financial cliff. When they finally move to privatize Canada Post, they want to get it cheap.
Mike Palecek is a National Union Representative with Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW)
Read full editorial: Canada Post is not on life support, it is being murdered | rabble.ca.
On Sunday January 26th the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is greeting the return of Parliament with a rally and march in Ottawa to demand the reversal of planned cuts to the postal service. Similar actions are taking place across the country.
