Canada Post Update: Alternate Pickup Locations, E-Edition to be FREE
Canada Post’s largest union CUPW delivered 72 hours notice of job action on November 12. On Friday, November 15, it went ahead with the strike action, shutting down mail delivery and unionized post offices country wide.
Unexpectedly, Canada Post countered Friday morning announcing that no mail would be processed at all, even locally in non-CUPW post offices.
This was a departure from what Caribou Publishing has been told in the weeks leading up to the strike by Canada Post officials, most of whom are non-CUPW employees who were expecting to be able to process local mail. Through their own internal discussions, and from experience with past strikes, it was expected that local mail and newspapers would still be put in local boxes, as long as the mail was dropped off at the specific post office of delivery. For example, in order for Holden residents to receive their newspaper, a Tofield Mercury employee would need to deliver it directly to Holden post office. This is something we do already, so we hoped for minimal interruption.
However, now that Canada Post has decided to freeze all mail, even those at small local post offices, our company and newspapers across the country will have no choice but to make alternate arrangements.
Anyone who normally has their newspaper mailed, can instead pick it up at the following locations:
-The Tofield Mercury office in Tofield
-Tofield Library in Tofield (open until 8pm Wed & Thur & Saturday 9:30-2)
-Beaver County office in Ryley
-Village of Holden office in Holden
-Spilstead Hall for rural readers west of Tofield
All regular stores will have copies for sale per usual.
Additionally, extra copies will be for sale in stores. If you are forced to purchase a copy that would normally be mailed to you as part of your annual subscription, let us know and an additional month will be added to your expiry date.
For any week impacted, e-editions of our newspaper will be available free of charge for viewing on Patreon and Issuu. Those will be embedded here at our website starting Wednesday.
The federal government has appointed a mediator between the two sides, but it was reported by Global News on Monday that the two sides are still “far apart” on several issues.
We remain hopeful that only the November 20 edition will be interrupted, however, we feel the plans in place will ensure most local readers can grab their newspaper easily at an alternate location, and if not, will be able to read it easily online. We expect the free online editions will attract even non-subscribers, and fully expect to actually have more readers than usual during the November 20 edition and beyond. So advertisers can rest assured that we are committed to getting as many eyeballs on our product as possible during this Canada Post freeze.
Thank you for your patience and for supporting your local newspaper.
