By Toni MacAfee
I am a postal worker and proud of it! As postal workers, the dedication and commitment it takes to get on as a full-time employee is unappreciated and misunderstood. We don’t walk in one day, they say you are hired and you start working!
Many of us spend years and years as temps and part-timers with the hope of getting on as full time. Many of us worked multiple jobs as temps and part-timers as we waited for more hours at the post office. As temps, we often went weeks, months, without any work. Meanwhile many of us gave up other work, other opportunities, just so we could get on as full-time at Canada Post to have the wages, benefits, job security and rights. And to do a job that we love!
Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers (RSMCs )spent years as contractors, being treated like shit by Canada Post, but many have stayed on for much longer, even longer than urban members. Whole generations of families fought for a union and fought for their rights because of the love of their jobs.
It’s been us, postal workers who continue to make our public service work.
The bosses and execs who have been there for a minute seem to underestimate our dedication and forget how hard each of us have fought to get jobs and how hard we all have fought to protect this service. No Conservative nor CEO is going to take that away from us!
We need to make sure we continue to fight and we need to make sure that not one of our sisters or brothers, friends, or family members vote for a party hell-bent on destroying our public postal service and stealing our jobs we have fought for. It is our public service! And we will fight like hell for it!