Are you a postal worker opposed to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers’ sabotage of our struggle? Are you ready to take up the struggle outlined in this statement or do you want to learn more about our strategy and program? Contact the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee at canadapostworkersrfc@gmail.com.

Canada Post letter carriers, sorting plant workers, post office staff and drivers are voting between April 20 and May 30 on tentative agreements (TAs) for urban and rural units, and on a strike mandate. The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) urges postal workers to vote “No” to the sellout agreements accepted by the union apparatus and “Yes” to the strike mandate.

However, we will not sugar coat the truth. Important and necessary as such a vote would be, it alone will not suffice. To defeat the Liberal government and corporate Canada—for it is they ultimately who determine the class-war policies of Canada Post management—postal workers must adopt a new strategy based on the mobilization of the social power of the working class.

We must combine rejection of the TAs with a fight to make our struggle with Canada Post the catalyst for a broader working class offensive in defence of good-paying secure jobs, public services and the right to strike. We must call on all logistics workers and the broader working class to join us in waging an industrial and political struggle against the Carney Liberal government and the capitalist ruling elite’s agenda of austerity and war.

The bureaucrats who head the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) have at every point sabotaged our struggle, while keeping us in the dark. If we are to prevail, power must be placed back in the hands of the rank and file where it belongs, through the building of democratic and militant rank-and-file committees at every work location.

Why CUPW’s betrayals demand rebellion

The TAs under consideration intensify the “Amazonification” of Canada Post, by normalizing precarious, low-paid work throughout the Crown corporation. Language like “flexible,” “part-time” and “weekend” illustrate this. The framework is being created for a brutal restructuring and jobs massacre aimed at eliminating two-thirds, or 30,000 of the 55,000 current jobs, by no later than 2025. All of this is based on the claim that Canada Post must be a profit-making capitalist concern, something CUPW entirely accepts.

The attacks are already unfolding before we vote. On April 16, Canada Post released details of the 136,000 addresses that will lose door-to-door delivery in the coming months. This is the first step in a five-year drive to end door-to-door delivery across the country.

For decades, postal workers were among the most militant section of the working class. We’ve lived up to that reputation by striking nationally for 32 days in November-December 2024, and then again for two weeks after wildcat strikes broke out in September 2025 in response to Minister for Government Transformation Joel Lightbound’s announcement that the Liberal government was ordering massive cuts at Canada Post.

In both cases, the strikes were initiated from below. In both cases, the CUPW repudiated our militancy. It coordinated with the Canadian Labour Congress to isolate our struggle from other sections of workers and to demobilize us. It kept all decisions about the conduct of our strike and our demands, including whether to defy the government’s patently illegal December 2024 strikebreaking order, in the hands of a tiny number of senior bureaucrats. Our strikes were short-circuited from above, with nothing to show but deeper concessions and lost paycheques.

This is not a matter of a few tactical errors. CUPW’s interventions have materially weakened us, fueling frustration and division among the rank and file. The union’s actions have enforced the subordination of workers’ needs to corporate profit, assisted the Liberal government which they continue to claim is a “progressive” alternative to Poilievre’s far-right Conservatives, and blocked the mobilization of the wider working class. The union has acted in opposition to our interests, because the CUPW bureaucracy, like all the union apparatuses, considers itself to be “partners” of corporate management and government, conspiring with them to ram concessions down workers’ throats. This process has been ongoing for the past four decades.

In an interview with the Toronto Star, York University Professor Steven Tufts made note of the CPC’s backroom dealings with the government, concluding, “I think we can expect Canada Post with the assistance of the government to hit workers hard and fast with these changes. The only question left will be if it is with a closed or open fist.”

The Carney government and corporate Canada want to inflict a major defeat on us, pushing through a massive restructuring at our expense and trashing any conception of Canada Post as a public service, so as to set a precedent for the gutting of workers’ rights and all public services. Every capitulation hands the ruling class a verified tactic to intimidate workers across the economy! If Canada Post can be gutted on the basis of threats and government interventions, so too can other public services, federal and provincial.

An alternative strategy is possible, because this is everybody’s fight

The attacks being advanced against postal workers are not isolated technical disputes over route layouts or job classifications. They represent the spearhead of a coordinated political offensive to diminish and privatize public services, slash wages across the economy, and convert secure full‑time employment into precarious, low‑paid, weekend and gig‑work.

There is a different path, because postal workers have power. Along with delivery workers at Amazon, Canada Post-owned Purolator and other providers, we operate the logistics backbone that keeps the economy moving. These are the sections of workers most immediately impacted by the outcome of our negotiations, and these are among the first workers to whom we must appeal for support in a future strike wave. But to translate this potential into victory requires an organizational and political break from the CUPW bureaucracy. 

What is required is the rapid development of democratic rank‑and‑file committees in every depot, sorting plant and retail outlet. These committees must be accountable to members, elected and recallable by the shop floor, and run on a transparent mandate to defend jobs and the postal service.

For a political struggle against austerity and war

The federal government has explicitly tied its postal transformation plan to a program of “fiscal sustainability.” The assault on Canada Post is aimed at redirecting public resources away from public services toward corporate subsidies, military rearmament, and war. Domestic and foreign policy are inseparably linked, as workers are forced to fund war abroad and subsidize tax cuts for the super-rich. 

Stopping the Carney government’s program therefore requires a political counteroffensive that exposes and opposes austerity and war. A workers’ strategy must link the defence of decent jobs and public services with opposition to militarism and corporate giveaways. The resources exist, but the political will to stand up to the vicious appetite of the monopolies and oligarchs remains to be mobilized. 

The transformation of our isolated contract fight into a working-class political struggle will cause workers across the logistics and public sectors to recognize our shared stake and respond. However, this is only possible insofar as our leadership is willing to speak these truths and organize masses of workers around clear demands based on what working people need, not what the government and big business claim is “affordable.” The nationalist and pro-capitalist union bureaucracy, tied to the bosses and their state apparatus, is organically incapable of doing this.

The national basis of all the unions mean they are incapable of, and hostile to, the international character of the struggle we’re involved in. The delivery and logistics sectors are globally integrated, operating with ideas of “efficiency” and “profitability” determined in a ruthless process of worldwide competition. This is most evident in the explosive growth of giants like Amazon and UPS, but it is also underlined by the simultaneous drive of national postal services, like Canada Post, the US Postal Service and Britain’s Royal Mail, to destroy hard-won worker rights in order to boost corporate coffers.

This is why we must respond with an international strategy to win decent-paying, secure jobs for all. Postal workers must build our own mass, democratic organizations rooted in the workplace, aligned with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. The PWRFC is uniquely positioned to provide political clarity and organizational leadership, taking as our starting point an international perspective.

Our struggle  is part of a larger fight to place social needs above private profit, to put technology and AI at the service of workers and the public, and to democratize control over essential services. This requires rejecting the capitalist logic that demands austerity and war. 

We now face a defining choice: Accept a future of shrinking public services, precarious work and endless austerity, or organize independently, leading the broader working class in a political and industrial counteroffensive. Make our just struggle to defend our jobs and rights the beginning of a mass movement to defend all public services, defeat austerity and oppose rearmament and the drive to war! To develop the strategy and solidarity required to win, reach out to the PWRFC at canadapostworkersrfc@gmail.com or by filling out the form below.