For several months our postal service has been deteriorating, with our mailman delivering letters well after dark by the light of a sort of headlight. I've complained to Canada Post and been told there is nothing that can be done about it. I've also written to the ombudsman but so far not received an answer.
La Presse today confirms my worse suspicions today, though. Misguided changes, involving rather large capital expenses in the form of mail trucks for every letter carrier and the reorganization of routes have resulted in 10 and 12 hour work days, masses of overtime and worker burnout.
The corp lost a lot of money last year, in part because it has had to make up for inequitable pay practices following a Supreme Court decision. Paying women less than men was a stupid decision at the time, and it would seem that current management isn't much smarter.
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Of course, it pays to follow more than a single story.
There was a story some time back about how the Post Office is trying to deal with the changing mail, so they were trying in some areas later delivery. With fewer letters being sent, there's more focus on small packages (and of course the rise of mail order in the form of "web commerce" has made that more significant). There's little point in a mail carrier trying to deliver a package if nobody is home, so better to deliver later when people are at home.
I seem to recall something else about a change to small trucks or something precisely because of the shift to packages.
There's talk right now of closing some post offices, the usual "no" reaction, yet I haven't been in a post office for at least a decade. They've shifted much of the service to outlets at drugstores. That too has the advantage that they stay open later, so you actually can get that package that they tried to deliver when nobody was home. I did worry originally, too many places for a while had "leave your bags at the front desk", yet those postal outlets are a good thing. And no surly service from the traditional post office employees.
Very little is binary, you have to look at how things interrelate, which is what ecology is about.
Michael
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