Who's minding the store?

His background is milk and chocolates.  That's who's running Canada Post.  Doug Ettinger.  You've also got seven more senior executives and....wait for it......14 vice-presidents!!!!

That's 22 people who couldn't get a contract with the union done over the last 365 days -- the length of time workers have been without a contract!  The nearest I can figure from the massive org chart is that VP Mike Shearon of Operations would be the guy charged with dealing with the union.  Great job, Mike!

CEO Doug Ettinger makes $500,000, so do the math on how much money is squandered on the rest of the bunch.  Millions and millions!   Then there's Jean-Yves Duclos, the minister responsible, who did nothing for the entire year no contract was reached.

So now, here we are.  Heading into Christmas and there's no end in sight.  I have no time for the union, which is too stupid to figure out Canada Post's operational model makes no sense.  The corporation has lost $491 million in the first six months of 2024.  $491 million!!!  And they have done nothing to stem the flow of tax dollars bleeding out of our pockets.

They're up to billions lost in the last five years.  That's unconscionable and has to change. 

Bye bye to this guy.

Frankly, I blame Joe Davidson, the rabid union guy who started it all.  Joe was notorious as the leader who once proclaimed, "To hell with the public."  In the late 1970s, as the leader of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, he was perhaps the most hated man in Canada.  I remember him well.

Davidson told his story in an autobiography, warts and all.  He recounted his experience as a worker in Scotland, toiling in foundries before his move to Canada.  He described his rise to become a union an executive, a position he never really wanted, he claimed.  As if. 

Most importantly, he offered insight into the most contentious period in Canadian postal history, 13 years that witnessed five separate work stoppages, a time of rapid technological change and great labour unrest.

Yep, Joe was a jerk who ruined the post office and then went back to Scotland to die.  Thanks a bunch!  But UPS, Purolator, DHL, FedEx and Canpar can thank him for their rise and vast fortunes!  He made the post office obsolete 50 years ago.

As for the current union, there are 330,000 employees with Mark Diamondstein heading it.  Those 22 executives need to fire themselves and someone needs to scrap the whole organization and bring in a new model fashioned after the private courier companies.

Will it ever happen?  No. 

My own memories of Canada Post are of our mailman, Henry, who was beloved by my family.  Until my Mother caught him sneaking into the house (always unlocked in those days) and nipping into the liquor.  I remember him sitting in our living room one morning, while my Mother and aunts held an intervention.  Henry was weeping, but they didn't report him and he never did it again.  That's the kind of people my family were.  Honourable.  May they all rest in peace.

And Henry too.