Prince George postal workers are braving the cold conditions once again.
As of 7AM today, more than 150 employees are back on strike for the second time since October 30th in response to the current state of contract negotiations with Canada Post.
This includes the stations on 5th Avenue, 15th Avenue, and the processing plant on Penn Road.
According to PG Spokesperson Clark Rasmussen, the CUPW’s last offer they pitched to @canadapostcorp went ignored; “the company wanted a cooling off period for the next 2 months” | #CityOfPG @mypgnow pic.twitter.com/rPHLcAECbo
— Kyle Balzer (@KyleBalzer) November 20, 2018
Local CUPW President Clark Rasmussen told My Prince George Now on Monday that an offer was pitched they thought was good, but the corporation wanted a “two-month cooling period.”
“There is no cooling off period,” said Rasmussen.
“We have been negotiating for over a year at the table and the company right up until now has decided to not negotiate fairly and we have a lot of big-ticket items on the table and one of them is our health and safety and we`re not going to give into something that doesn’t address that.”
This is likely to cause even more stress among employees and holiday shoppers with Christmas nearly a month away.
Right now, Canada Post lists December 18th as the last-chance deadline for parcel shipping across the country and December 21st for local and regional shipping, but that could change due to on-going picket lines.
While no PG postal worker was willing to go on record to state an opinion on current contract talks, the frustration of being outside enduring the cold weather was a shared feeling.
This is Canada Post’s most recent statement:
With all efforts exhausted to restore operations while the labour dispute continues, Canada Post is taking the extraordinary measure of advising customers and Canadians that they should expect potentially long and unpredictable delays this holiday season. With current backlogs, this is likely to be the situation for the next several weeks, including the peak holiday season and through January 2019.
The postal service remains operational, but the prolonged and on-going strike activity has not only caused significant backlogs, it continues to greatly reduce our ability to process and deliver mail and parcels across the country. Our focus across the country is to process and deliver as much as possible on a first-in, first-out basis.
The backlogs also affect mail and parcels entering Canada from other countries. Currently, our facilities in Vancouver, Edmonton and Montréal are also experiencing severe backlogs. International items will require screening by the Canada Border Services Agency and we are working in partnership with them to manage the significant existing backlog.
We will continue to provide service updates to help Canadians make important decisions this holiday season.
WATCH:
(From October 30th)
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