Canada Post

Human Resources Management

Canada Post

Karlysa Thompson & Randice Dean

University of Prince Edward Island

Human Resources; Canada Post

Abstract

Labour relations refers to the leadership between employees and employers in the company or organization as well as in the industry. Labour relations are affected by several things, such as labour laws and political decisions. Businesses or companies always put the best of their efforts to balance good labour relations for the purpose to cut off their costs. The importance of labour relations is to establish a good relationship with the union and workers. Labour relations protects the employees and allows them to be vocal about any concerns they may have, such as wages, benefits, working conditions. Unions can have a positive and negative effect on companies. However, Unions ultimate goal is to ensure that the business has a success rate and a healthy work environment. However, issues can occur and have an impact on the organization's reputation. The union related issue that we will discuss in this paper is “Strike”. According to business dictionary a strike can be defined as a collective, organized slowdown of work by employees to force owners to accept their demands. The jurisdiction reflects that strike must involve acceptance of strike by majority employees and must contain independent verification. Canada Post Corporation is a Canadian company that trades as Canada Post. Canada Post Company is a crown corporation that operates as the primary postal operator in the State of Canada. The company provides services to almost 16 million people and addresses which have delivered more than 8.5 billion items till the end of 2016 while the revenues of the company from these operations amount to $8.2 billion. As the company is a leading company/provider of electronic commerce and customers’ communication solutions, Canada Post is the most affordable, leading, and highly reliable services provider in the region for online shoppers and e-commerce shippers (Corporation, 2019).

Canada Post has been known to strike for better benefits from the company. But we will focus on the recent years strikes in this paper. Several reasons are there due to which the employees went on strike but the most crucial ones are;

At the time when Canada Post and CUPW did not reach an agreement about their new contract demands after almost a year-long negotiation, the union and employees decided to go on and went on strike (Global News, 2019).

The discrepancy in payments/pay of rural and urban postal workers was another crucial reason behind the strike of employees. Due to this, the concern of employees was that the pays of rural carriers are based on their route while urban carriers are paid based on hours worked (Corporation, 2019).

According to newswire In October 16th 2018 Canada Post proposed and offer to increase wages, job security, and improve benefits. Canada Post wanted the rotational strikes to desist. (Newswire ,2018). This has been adopted as a strategy for resolving the strike issues and calming the situation. The manger of the company has dominant role in convincing the employees for withdrawing from strike.

Canada Post issued a statement saying “We value the relationship with the union and have been able to find common ground on some issues and have also committed to work together constructively on several important files. Those include working together to address employees workload concerns caused by parcel growth, additional financial services and going beyond pay equity for Rural and Suburban employees by extending job security and moving to one uniform.” The company emphasized on valuing its relationship with employees by offering them dialogue. The company has taken many measures for resolving the concerns of the employees such as by assessing their wages and benefits.

It is evident that Canada Post would like to put an end to this ongoing strike . The union demands have not been met as yet. Therefore, the union and Canada Post will eventually come to a settlement. At the moment there are no new updates on coming to a settlement.

Recommendations

Below are some strong recommendations for resolving the concern, Canada Post faces/faced.

Anticipate needs and concerns of employees and meet them before the strike inversely impact the company

Follow fair and highly professional policies that answer every question raised by employees feeling that they have been treated unfairly.

Identify hidden but actual reasons for the strike instead of looking at direct reasons.

Improve and develop business strategies that are aligned with employees and their concerns.

Provide better working conditions for the employees to stay engaged.

Ensure that there aren't any communication barriers between the employees and the employer.

Increase job security

With these recommendations, we believe that Canada Post will operate more efficiently and effectively. These course to actions would avoid any future disputes. While general striking is allowed, it interrupts the daily operations. Canada Post has faced rotating strikes which are more harmful to a business. It would be in this company's best interest to avoid any more strikes.

Conclusion

During these economic times, many situations can occur in an organization. Unions give employees a platform to address the current issues experienced in the workplace. However, when strikes occur the community is affected as well. Canada Post is a well known reputable transporting company that many individuals depend on for daily services. During strikes, customer satisfaction is at risk and can deter individuals away from the company if the incident keeps reoccurring. Therefore, it is beneficial that companies ensure to treat their employees fairly, because strikes also cause financial damage and lousy exposure for the company. Throughout this paper it is shown that unions and employers can have disputes for a long period of time. However,. Policies and practices play an important role in organizations. It is vital that the employees are kept happy and the employers as well.

References

Corporation, C. (2019). Announcements | Canada Post. Canadapost.ca. Retrieved 9 October 2019, from https://www.canadapost.ca/web/en/blogs/announcements/list.page

Global News. (2019).Canada Post Strike | News, Videos & Articles. Retrieved 9 October 2019, from https://globalnews.ca/tag/canada-post-strike/