Nearly three weeks into the strike by Canada Post’s 55-thousand unionized employees, the calls grow louder for the federal government to force an end to the nearly three-week-old walkout.
In Calgary the co-owner of Local Laundry, an online clothing retailer, responded to the ongoing dispute by telling Global News it “does nothing but hurt Canadians.”
“How much longer can Canadians be understanding,” asked Connor Curran.
“This (time of year) is our Super Bowl. We just had Black Friday, Cyber Monday, massive days of the year for us,” said Curran.
“We are entirely an e-commerce company. The majority of our business is people shopping online. We don’t have a physical retail space, so it’s people ordering online. This is our bread and butter, the most important time. This is a critical make or break time of the year for us,” added Curran.
With no mail moving, Local Laundry has had to explore other shipping options, but not only are they a lot more expensive, every other small business is doing the same, so “other carriers are facing backlogs,” said Curran, “carrying the load of packages that aren’t getting through Canada Post.”
Curran says there’s also a lot more communication with customers required on the importance of getting orders in early and letting them know the status of their orders.
“So we’re feeling it in price, we’re feeling it in timelines and we’re feeling it with customer and client frustration,” said Curran. It is “a perfect storm.”
And it’s not just Local Laundry that is suffering, Curran says the charities his company supports are suffering too.
Local Laundry is on a mission to donate $1,000,000 to local charities by 2030.
For example, said Curran, for every pair of socks the company sells to a customer, it donates another pair to a shelter in need, so fewer socks sold means fewer socks for charities.
As the strike by more than 55,000 workers drags on, Canada’s business community has been ramping up pressure on the federal government to intervene.
The Retail Council of Canada is the latest organization calling on Ottawa to force an end to the nearly three-week-old strike, saying it’s putting businesses and their employees in jeopardy.
While so far the Trudeau government has resisted those calls, late Wednesday, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers announced it has sent another round of counter-proposals to a federal-appointed mediator.
The union said it’s ready to return to federal mediation, which was put on pause last week as the two sides appeared too far apart to reach an agreement.
Canada Post said it presented a new framework for reaching agreements to the union over the weekend.
Among the key issues in the dispute are wages, and the expansion of postal delivery services to the weekend.
-With files from the Canadian Press