The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) calls on our 55,000 striking Canada Post brothers and sisters to join us in mobilizing against the Liberal government’s strikebreaking.

Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon has invoked Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to effectively order the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to criminalize our strike. He is using the same patently illegal and anti-democratic mechanism the government used in August and November to illegalize job actions by CN and CPKC rail workers and Quebec and British Columbia port workers. Their contracts are now to be dictated by pro-employer, state-appointed arbitrators.

We urge all postal workers to join us in campaigning for defiance of the impending CIRB decision that will declare the Canada Post contract negotiations at “an impasse” and order us back to work, while extending the expired contracts for urban and rural and suburban postal workers until May.

Conditions for us to defy the state assault on our right to strike and mobilize broad support within the working class, up to and including in a general strike, are propitious. This is because the issues that we are fighting for are of burning importance to all workers, public and private sector alike—the defence of public services; workers’ control over the introduction of new technologies; an end to concessions and multi-tier workforces; and the defence of the right to strike.

We do not issue our call for defiance lightly.

It must be accompanied by a fundamental change in strategy. We must make our strike the spearhead of a working class counter-offensive against the dismantling of public services, the sacrificing of social needs to the war agenda of Canadian imperialism, and the defence of the right to strike.

The government and corporate media will howl that we are breaking the law and threaten us with savage and consequential reprisals. But the collective bargaining system is a fraud! Whenever workers are in a position of strength, the government, working hand in glove with the employers, intervenes to rob us of the right to strike—that is, the right to collectively fight for our basic interests and determine our conditions of work.

In the past, governments repeatedly used draconian back-to-work laws against us, including in 2011 and 2018. Now, as part of the ruling class’ offensive to increase worker exploitation by imposing inflation-driven real wage cuts, and use AI and other new technologies to slash jobs and Amazonify the workforce, the Trudeau government has dispensed with any parliamentary fig leaf. It has arbitrarily and illegally rewritten the law, through a bogus reinterpretation of Section 107 of the Labour Code, to arrogate the power to declare strikes illegal and short-circuit the bargaining process at will.

From the outset, the PWRFC has warned that we face a political struggle against the Trudeau government and all of corporate Canada. They want to restructure Canada Post along the lines of Purolator, Amazon and other cheap-labour courier and delivery services. What this would mean for us is precarious part-time or temporary employment, low wages, no benefits, and no rights.

Now more than ever, the central issue is to mobilize the social power of the entire working class. Every worker has a stake in our struggle, and we must make them aware of that.

The biggest obstacle we have to overcome in mobilizing working class support is the trade union bureaucracy. From the beginning, CUPW, the Teamsters (who have not lifted a finger to mobilize Purolator workers on our behalf), and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) leaders have done everything to isolate our struggle. Above all, they have done nothing to prepare mass working class opposition to government strikebreaking, although everyone knew that this was central to the strategy of Canada Post management and the Trudeau government—a government the union officialdom and their NDP allies continue to prop up. Just yesterday, the CUPW bureaucracy was urging us to campaign among MPs to pressure the government to intervene in the bargaining process.

The PWRFC urges all postal workers to join us in fighting to take the struggle into our own hands. We must not allow the CUPW leadership to submit to the government/CIRB strikebreaking without our voices being heard.

Workers must demand that the CUPW immediately convene meetings in every postal depot and of every local in the next 36 hours to discuss how we can defy government strikebreaking and mobilize the broadest support in the working class for our defence.

We urge all workers who agree with this demand to reach out to the PWRFC, study our statements and join our ranks.