Canada Post is under attack. Political favouritism, privatized delivery, and precarious subcontracting are putting workers and public service at risk. From Intelcom’s exploitative practices to the government’s support of billion-dollar profits, André Frappier discusses how one of Canada’s most essential institutions is being dismantled, and who is benefiting.
The situation kinda sucks but it is what it is. Basically, we’ve got private delivery firms with non-unionized employees and gig workers taking up the more lucrative package delivery business, with the crappy money-losing mail business going to Canada Post. Uniuni, Dragonfly, and Intelcom are replacing Canada Post. But Canada Post’s union shot themselves in the foot by going on strike multiple times, for long enough that businesses switched away from using them because they’re seen as unreliable now.
The gig worker model seems to be more efficient and clearly the investors of these companies agree, so I don’t see any economic force that’s going to stop things from continue in the direction that they are. There is still competition here though between these companies for small parcel delivery, so it’s keeping shipping prices down.
P.S. this is also the model for private healthcare in Ontario that they’re attempting - farm out the lucrative procedures to private clinics, with the expensive and risky treatments being done in public hospitals. So watch for that…
Except the gig economy is far less efficient. All it does is take money from your pockets and put it in really rich people’s pockets.
What happens when you work as a gig worker? You lose benefits, you lose a union, you don’t get minimum wage, you’re just poorer than you would have been if you had that job before it went gig. Of course your job security is totally shot. But it’s not like the price of delivering a package went down. Of course it went up.
So somebody got that money that you’re no longer getting. Moreover, if you’re replacing a public service with a for-profit private service, then the people who own the company are going to make sure they get their cut. They’d like to pretend that they will streamline things, but in reality we typically find that they just charge more because nobody can stop them.
this was actually a good summary of what’s going on https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1976404879305519427.html
What the actual fuck - they sold SCI? Fuck me.
Reading these few points, I think the scheme is pretty clear. Sell all profit generating parts of Canada Post to private capital, then say Canada Post is losing money without mentioning that. Use the money-losing narrative to manufacture consent for further privatization. Fuck me.
It’s the same scam time and again, and they just keep getting away with it.
Can we have a longer write-up? I have not heard of Stephen Punwasi, he seems like a smart guy!
He seems pretty on top of things. Don’t know if he does any longer form writing, but definitely insightful from my experience.