November 28, 2018

The CWA Canada Student/Associate Members are throwing their full support behind the more than 50,000 striking postal workers that have been unjustly legislated back to work by this federal government.

Postal workers have been on rotating strikes for 37 days over core issues that are vitally important. Issues of women’s equality, health and safety, precarious work – all issues that Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government claims to stand for. However, with this back-to-work legislation, the government has decided instead to allow Canada Post to continue with practices that reinforce inequity and to continue injuring workers.

Workers in Canada have fundamental rights to collective bargaining, the right to negotiations, and most importantly, the right to withhold their labour in the face of bad-faith negotiations. The CWA Canada Student/Associate Members take the removal of these rights very seriously. An attack of this magnitude on CUPW-STTP members is an attack on the entire labour movement and sends a very clear message from this government to workers around the country: we don’t care about Canadian workers, we’re not on your side. If Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government wants to continue to claim they are progressive, feminist, and worker-friendly, we demand that they reverse this decision and allow CUPW-STTP to continue to negotiate towards a fair deal.

We stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers at CUPW-STTP as this legislation amounts to nothing more than the government trampling on their democratic rights as workers. We will fully support any and all actions that CUPW-STTP workers will employ over the coming days and weeks to fight back and even defy this legislation. We encourage all members of the general public to do the same. A crown corporation can and should do better. We demand better.

In Solidarity,

The CWA Canada Associate Membership Program Steering Committee