Inside Postal Workers: The Labour Process, State Policy, and the Workers' Response

Declining real wages and pressure to increase productivity pushed Canadian postal workers to a national wildcat strike in 1965. After this achievement they began a series of day-to-day battles to extend their shopfloor power. Reacting to this, postal management embarked on a mechanization project to transform the labour process. New federal labour laws were enacted which stifled the expression of workers' power through their union. The national union officials proved unable to break out of these bureaucratic structures that cut them off from the rank and file. An abrupt national wildcat/sitdown strike in 1974 resulted in a change in the national union leadership. Solid victories were won dealing with the transition to new mechanized plants. However, management began a counterattack aimed a weakening worker solidarity by hiring non-union workers and refusal to honour the collective agreement. The stage is then set for a series of local wildcats in the late 1970s, the Toronto strike of December 1977, and the national strike in 1978. The postal workers' past and present is summed up with a view to future struggles.