Postal workers on strike in Niagara-on-the-Lake say they want wages that keep up with inflation, a secure pension that provides defined benefits and the big demand: Protection from precarious working conditions.

“Our concern is that they are opening the door to gigifying all of our jobs,” said Zach Lepp, vice president of Canadian Union of Postal Workers Local 614, which represents NOTL Queen Street postal workers.

“They (management) have outright said we want to gigify the workforce. They’re not hiding this,” he added.

A gigified workforce is one mainly made up of part-time, temporary or freelance employees.

Take an employee who works full time, eight hours a day and 40 hours a week, said Lepp, then tell that worker one or two of their shifts will be moved to a weekend and will only mean three or fours of work.

“This opens the door for them to then come to us in the future and say, ‘Well, you’re not 40 hours a week anymore, you’re down to 32 or 25.’”

“Our concern is that they’re going to be pushing us to look …like some of the Amazon drivers that you see on your weekends,” he added, also using the example of Uber drivers who are contract employees of the company and not full-time workers.

On the topic of benefits, Lepp said concerns with them are just as important to the striking workers — namely pensions.

“Pension is a big one,” he said.

Lepp added the pension fight is mainly for the next generation of postal employees.

“They want to switch them over from what we have, which is called a defined benefit pension to a defined contribution pension,” said Lepp, who has been a letter carrier in St. Catharines for 20 years.

“So with defined benefits, you know what you’re going to be getting on the day of your retirement.”

“With defined contribution, you contribute but it may or may not be there on your retirement date, depending on how it’s managed,” he added.

Other worker demands include wages that keep up with inflation and a more cautious and respectful distribution of the service’s profits.

From a management point of view, there are no profits.

Thousands of Canada Post workers have been on strike since Nov. 15, following a year of negotiations on a new collective agreement between the union and the corporation’s representatives.

In a Nov. 22 media release, Canada Post said it recorded a 2024 third-quarter loss of $315 million.

Other estimates are that it has lost over $3 billion since 2018.

That doesn’t fly with Lepp, who said the organization has spent considerable capital investments in recent years.

Hundreds of millions of dollars invested in a new plant in Scarborough, for example, he said, don’t paint a picture of a struggling organization.

“Well, that’s an investment, not a loss.”

“If you want to talk about investing in infrastructure, why not invest in your workers?” he asked.

Canada Post did not return The Lake Report’s request for an interview by press time.

Virgil, St. Davids and Queenston post offices

While the NOTL Old Town post office on Queen St. is closed due to the strike, the outlets in St. Davids, Virgil and Queenston remain staffed and open but with limited services.

Residents can still get their mail that was delivered before the Nov. 15 start of the strike and The Lake Report can still be picked up at each location on Thursdays.

The difference in services is due to the unions representing the locations.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers represents the Queen St. workers and is the organisation that led the national walk out, while the the Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association represents more than 3,000 rural post offices across the country and is not part of the collective bargaining efforts of the CUPW.

Mail delivery to Santa will continue throughout Canada Post strike