Canada Post is in the midst of a countrywide structural change that has involved selling historic real estate, building new depots and eliminating door-to-door delivery.
British Columbia is the last region to experience the reorganization of postal routes and automation of mail sorting that the Crown corporation says will make it more efficient as volumes of letter mail continue to decline and parcel deliveries increase.
“It’s allowing us to maintain delivery and ensure we are serving our customers, but at the same time it’s reduced the cost of providing that service, because the reality is that mail has been on the decline for the last 10 years,” said Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton. “Last year we delivered 1.4 billion fewer letters than we did in 2006, so we have to make changes to transform the business.”
While the changes have shown early results for the company – Canada Post reported a profit of $22 million in the first quarter of 2015 – the union representing postal workers says the route changes have been hard on mail carriers.
“They’re working excessive amounts of overtime they’re not necessarily wanting to work, even though they’re being compensated,” said Jennifer Savage, president of the Vancouver local of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). “Their work-life balance is being affected.”
Canada Post sold its historic downtown post office and sorting plant in 2013 to pension fund British Columbia Investment Management Corp., but the building has yet to be redeveloped. A new sorting plant on Sea Island near the Vancouver International Airport opened in 2014, and is designed to take advantage of e-commerce parcel shipments.
Several smaller new depots have opened throughout the city. Under the new mail delivery system, mail carriers will drive small mail vans and park them while they deliver both letters and parcels.
The new Canada Post sorting facility on Hastings Street and McLean Drive is one of several across the city aimed at accommodating the shift from letter mail to parcel delivery | Chung Chow
The corporation will no longer pay for taxis to transport mail carriers to and from their routes. Carolyn Bauer of the Vancouver Taxi Association said Canada Post has contracts with all four Vancouver cab companies.
While the corporation may be saving on taxi costs, it is paying a lot of overtime pay to mail deliverers, Savage said. When mail carriers work overtime, they are paid time and a half. Savage said mail carriers are currently working so much overtime because it’s not possible to get the new routes done in eight hours.
Hamilton countered that the routes have been redesigned with input from the union. But while the plan is to ultimately replace door-to-door delivery with large community mailboxes in single-family neighbourhoods, theoretically cutting down on delivery time, that will not happen in Vancouver until 2017 at the earliest.
CUPW has opposed Canada Post’s restructuring plan and has campaigned to save door-to-door delivery. Along with other Canadian cities, Vancouver city council has questioned where community mailboxes will go in a crowded urban landscape and how much say municipal governments will get over the placement of the boxes.
Hamilton said before any decisions are made, Canada Post will consult with municipalities.
In June, the City of Hamilton lost a court case involving placement of community mailboxes. An Ontario judge found that a city bylaw requiring Canada Post to get a permit before placing the large boxes on municipal land didn’t apply to the Crown corporation.
@jenstden
