Canada Post ending door-to-door delivery mid-2015: union

Canada Post will end door-to-door mail delivery next year in Prince Albert, Yorkton, Estevan and Moose Jaw.

Prince Albert employees were informed by a representative with the Crown corporation on Wednesday morning, according to Canadian Union of Postal Workers Local 810 president Jason Ripplinger. He said that they were told none of the employees in Prince Albert would lose their jobs as a result of the changeover to community mailbox delivery.

He said he was “kind of blindsided” by the announcement.

“They did announce recently that there’d be an announcement on where they’d be implementing CMBs (community mailboxes) in Saskatchewan, but I didn’t expect it would be this soon.  I think I heard in the next five weeks, looks like it happened within a week,” Ripplinger added.

Last year, Canada Post announced it would start phasing out door-to-door delivery over a five-year period in communities across the country.

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Ripplinger said Canada Post said it is looking at implementing the community mailboxes in Prince Albert as early as next August or September. The change will also affect all neighbourhoods, all at once.

Canada Post has confirmed that it met with employees at its Prince Albert Station Main depot. In a statement, it said home addresses with postal codes starting with S6V, S6W, S6X will be converting from door-to-door deliver to community mail boxes next fall.

In total, 9,157 addresses will be affected.

The Crown said in the statement that affected households will receive an information package and a mail-in survey.

For the employees, this will mean that the routes will change.

Ripplinger said they are expecting to lose 30 to 40 per cent of their routes because the carriers won’t have to deliver door-to-door. Right now, there are 32 delivery routes in Prince Albert.

He said the employees would be provided updates as information comes. But employees are generally worried about their jobs, he said.

“And there’ll be some surplus employees here, but as far as job losses, there’ll be none is what they’ve assured us,” Ripplinger said.

But he said anything that happens “this way” – reduction of positions – would come in the form of attrition. This means if someone retires or quits, their position will not be filled because there are surplus employees, he explained.

In its emailed statement, Canada Post confirms that no regular full-time or part-time employee will lose their job as a result of this change.

Ripplinger himself is disappointed with the announcement.

“We knew it was coming … but we didn’t think it would be implemented for at least another two years.”

The local union’s president said they maintain that seniors and the disabled will have a difficult time getting to the community mailboxes.

And determining where the mail boxes will be located is the next task.

Via telephone, director of media relations Anick Losier said that the locations of the community mail boxes will be determined through consultations with residents through the survey. She said that information, along with their pre-determined criteria, such as safety and accessibility.

“With that information, we’re just going to make sure that … the locations chosen are set according to the preferences of the residents it’s going to serve, in addition to the muncipality. Their feedback is also going to feed into the process.”

Five years, five million homes

Canada Post has cited falling volumes of letters being mailed across the country as one of the reasons behind its plan to phase out door-to-door delivery to five million residential addresses in Canada.

Ripplinger said letter carriers don’t really notice that change – he hasn’t noticed it. Parcel deliveries are up, he added.

“Canada Post has maintained parcels are up and they’re going to keep going up. We’re going to keep getting more. But letter mail is going down.”

The coming end of door-to-door mail delivery has not been the only change local letter carriers have had to face. Canada Post announced last April that Prince Albert’s local mail would be sent to sorting centres outside of Prince Albert to be sorted and returned to the city for delivery.

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames