Media Coverage of the Canada Post Strike is Centering Business Interests, Not the Interests of Workers

Canada’s postal worker strike is nearing the end of its second week with no sign of movement from Canada Post after negotiations broke down earlier this week.

While 55,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers have been on the picket lines since November 15 fighting to protect their pensions, improve working conditions and push for higher wages that keep pace with inflation, media coverage of the strike has tended to focus on anti-worker narratives rather than the reasons postal workers went on strike.

Now, even as the union says the employer is moving to lay off striking workers, common headlines centre around the impact of service disruptions on the general public —a similar talking point being used by Canada Post.

Stories about the strike impacting children’s ability to send letters to Santa and delaying holiday parcels, as well articles about the impact to small business and charities are the most common media narratives about the strike. 

Adam D.K. King, Assistant Professor in the Labour Studies Program at the University of Manitoba says Canadian media coverage of the postal strike is centering business interests ahead of the interests of workers. 

“I have seen a lot of coverage and concern about the impacts on small businesses and people not being able to get their parcels over the holiday season, Black Friday, these types of things,”  King told PressProgress. “There does seem to be a particular bias against workers or at least less of a focus on their issues and concerns when it comes to Canada Post.”

“I’m not sure how to explain that, but it’s definitely something that’s there. And even as the media, I think has improved their labor coverage when it comes to other public services. It doesn’t seem to be the case when it comes to Canada Post workers.”

In one article, Canada Post told the Star they are currently “unable to get mail to and from Santa in the North Pole” due to the labour disruption, but are committed to delivering every letter as well as his responses once postal operations restart.”

In another example, both Canada Post and the Retail Council of Canada were cited in an article about the concern of business owners, stating costs will be passed on to consumers. CUPW is only cited as responding to small business owners’ complaints. 

King says the lack of coverage of this labour action in particular is “noticeable” when compared to other public sector strikes in recent years.

“There’s less of a negative framing of education workers’ strikes,” King noted. “I think back to the general strike in Ontario a couple of years ago and my read on that is that the media was pretty supportive or certainly wasn’t engaging in any kind of anti-worker framing on that.”

“In the case of Canada Post, and I’m not sure how to explain this, but it is something that I think has been there, not just in this strike, but in previous strikes, there is a tendency to look at the supposed negative impacts.”

Despite the fact that the public is feeling direct impacts as a result of the strike, King says that there is “growing support for striking workers.”

“I think back to when grocery store workers went on strike and the GTA and how much support they had, and there are sort of a number of other examples, even federal public servants when they were on strike that the level of support actually that they received was quite surprising to me because they’re another group sort of like Canada Post workers that have sometimes been on the receiving end of public backlash,” King said.

“I think people understand that the cost of living crisis has been very difficult for workers and they’ve been generally supportive of the union demands.”

But while the public can empathize with union demands, employers are letting strikes drag on longer, King adds that strikes are lasting longer than they have in many years.

“It could be an indication that employers are just that much more reluctant and holding out, or you could read it that workers are also resolved in their demands,” King suggested. “But I think this predates the pandemic and so, I think the proper way to read that is that employers feel emboldened to hold out longer and keep their workers out longer on strike.”

“Employers are less willing to bargain because the Liberal government has used back to work orders in the past. I think Canada Post might expect some of the same treatment that the government might be there to also bail them out, which has had a chilling effect on bargaining and on their willingness to return to the tables with the meaningful offers for their workers.”