Free home mail delivery first appeared in Canada in 1874. As a result, letter carriers as an occupational group began to put down roots in the Canadian landscape around the last quarter of the 19th century. And, they were not slow in mustering their forces. In 1891, carriers in Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, London, Québec, Saint John, Winnipeg, and Kingston united under the Federated Association of Letter Carriers (FALC). In its beginnings and in accordance with its constitution, the union had no desire to interfere in the management of post offices or to raise issues of pay or working hours. Perceiving itself more as a benevolent society, it attended to the well being of its members by taking an interest in such matters as the compensation to be paid the family of a deceased letter carrier. In 1899, however, the issues of wages, leave and uniforms appeared in the minutes of a union meeting held by the Ottawa carriers. In 1902, the movement was joined by the carriers of Halifax, Montréal, Victoria, and Vancouver, and now had branches all over the country.
The Federated Association of Letter Carriers launched its first strike in 1918. Like postal workers generally, letter carriers had no well-defined and consistent work schedule. On occasion, they had to adjust to unforeseen situations such as late arrival at the station by the train carrying mail, or having to work Christmas Day without knowing when the day would end! Not only was their schedule flexible, but their pay was nothing to boast about. In 1902, the minimum wage for a letter carrier was $1.25 per day, and in 1913, $3.00 a day.
The early 20th century was a time of dazzling economic prosperity, so it was the last straw when, in 1918, the employer cited the imperatives of the war effort as a pretext for increasing working hours and cutting wages, which even then were not keeping pace with rising prices. Moreover, the government refused to pay an annual bonus, which made up a significant share of the carrier's overall pay.
The confrontation came at a time when the militancy of Canadian unions was at full throttle (overall membership rose from 143 000 in 1915 to 378 000 in 1919), as reflected in FALC, whose own membership doubled between 1914 and 1919. This national affirmation of the union movement happened to coincide with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, a matter of concern to the Canadian government, which had no hesitation in holding out the threat of job losses in the postal dispute and alerting the population to what it felt was a "red scare." In the end, the resolution of the dispute earned letter carriers the following gains, among others: wage increases, a 44-hour work week with overtime pay, full salary for the ten days of the strike, and a promise of non-discrimination against the strikers. The government further promised to set up a Civil Service Commission inquiry to look into the working conditions of postal employees. The strike by the Federated Association of Letter Carriers was the first nation-wide strike within the Canadian federal civil service.
After participating in 1919 in the Winnipeg General Strike, in the wake of which 700 postal workers were fired, FALC combined with the Dominion Postal Clerks Association to form the Canadian Federation of Postal Employees in 1920. However, as most of this organization's members were from Eastern Canada and it was intended as a counterbalance to a group of postal clerks and workers in the West that was founded the year before, its national foundations were not very solid, as shown by the strike of 1924. This stoppage to protest the employer's proposed wage cuts lasted two weeks, was not cohesive, had few echoes in the West, and ended in the humiliation of a reduction in wages. The fervour of the union movement was dampened for many years as a result.
In the wake of World War II and the economic recovery that it triggered, the employer promised to recognize and negotiate in good faith with the union officials, who, in turn, promised not to take strike action for the duration of a collective agreement. In 1944, the Federated Association of Letter Carriers joined with the Canadian Postal Employees Association (CPEA) and Railway Mail Clerks Federation to form the Postal Workers Brotherhood. Its executive was made up of the president and secretary-treasurer of each of the three unions, which worked through the 1950s to secure bargaining rights.
The eruption of another strike in 1965 resulted in, among other things, wage increases and the incorporation of the right to strike in the new public service labour legislation. Hence this work stoppage, although illegal, was nonetheless to be of benefit to other categories of public service workers. In that year, FALC had 7201 members. In 1967, FALC and the CPEA, which two years earlier had become the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, joined in a new structure called the Council of Postal Unions, which was to operate until 1974. In the 1970s, contrary to the situation with the postal clerks, the mechanization program introduced into the postal system had little impact on the letter carriers. In fact, continued expansion of the home delivery system contributed to an increase in their numbers. The Web site of the Canada Post Corporation states that in the year 2000 there are some 15 600 letter carrier routes in Canada.
Since 1989, the letter carriers of Canada and all those working at Canada Post have been represented by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. This is the logical culmination and extension of many campaigns fought under common fronts to improve the working conditions of individuals who have always stood apart from other public servants.
Gérald Pelletier
Sources
Canada Post Corporation Web site: http://www.canadapost.ca/
Canadian Union of Postal Workers. "Course: History and Orientation. Instructor's Notes," CUPW manuscript, 18 February 1994.
Palmer, Bryan D. The Character of Class Struggle: Essays in Canadian Working-Class History. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1986.
Vance, Tanya. The Canadian Letter Carrier, 1874-c. 1950. Canadian Postal Museum research paper, 1999.