For Immediate Release

OTTAWA - Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra has officially rejected a letter from postal workers asking him to extend the July 2 deadline for a lockout by a period of two weeks, which could mean that the profitable company is indeed preparing to lock out its workforce in the middle of a public postal review, spoiling the process.

“We only got their first real ‘offer’ last Saturday and it still contained a raft of cuts to our working standards that they know we could never accept,” said Mike Palecek, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

Canada Post’s haste to push matters to a head in the bargaining process while insisting on hefty cuts has had the CUPW crying foul from the beginning.

“Canada Post managers started this countdown to a labour dispute by filing for conciliation shockingly early on in the negotiations process,” said Palecek.

“They don’t really want to give us a chance to settle a deal. They want us out and they want the public to blame the postal workers for management’s decisions.”

In a letter handed out to postal workers late last night, one of Chopra’s human resources executives claims that agreeing to the union’s request to extend talks would only delay matters and produce further “uncertainty” for its customers.

“So they’re going to kill the mail and remove all uncertainty, I guess” said Palecek.

The profitable Crown Corporation, which netted almost $100 million last year and is in its 20th year of profits, is trying to cut back workers’ pensions and remove job security protections, among other cuts. It is refusing to listen to union proposals for the expansion of services and pay equity for rural and suburban mail carriers, 70% of which are women.

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For more information, please contact Aalya Ahmad, CUPW Communications, at 613-327-1177 or aahmad@cupw-sttp.org