Post Office's future uncertain - operations consolidated to Castlegar

By Andrew Zwicker

How important is it to have a post office in Rossland? This question came up in the past week as a result of a press release forwarded on by the Trail Local chapter of the Canadian Postal Workers that painted a potentially dire future for the Rossland and Trail post offices.

“The whole thing is that they have amalgamated services to Castlegar,” explained Ed Evans, president of the Trail branch of the Canadian Postal Workers Union. “This is a big story. Trail and Rossland have lost their status as post offices. Under the Canadian Postal Charter, Canada Post management are now eligible to close these post offices down. It’s really a big thing and people should be very concerned about it.”

As of January 10th Canada Post has centralized their mail sorting process and consolidated the Trail and Rossland mail sorting to the Castlegar office. Lillian Au of Canada Post’s media relations department explained the move.

“What has changed is that local mail from Rossland and Trail is now being processed in Castlegar. The change came into effect on January 10th. It really doesn’t affect the customer. The change with respect to local mail only applies to letter mail. The majority of mail originating from Rossland and Trail is now being sent to Castlegar for mail sortation. This change allows us to take advantage of efficiencies by consolidating mail sortation to one office in Castlegar.”

The Postal Workers' union doesn’t think the change is as benign as Canada Post claims.

“I’ll tell you first that both of these post offices don’t make any money,” explained Evans. “Within the postal service, rural offices are funded by the big offices like Calgary and the big cities. Now that they (Rossland and Trail) are just installations, management will do what they want to do with these two institutions. If you look at the charter you’ll see that there is a moratorium on closing post offices but it doesn’t say anything about installations. So it’s up to management now.”

Just what is the difference between an installation and an official post office? According to the union, nothing will change in the Rossland operation; however, they see this status change as being “the first step in what is clearly a process to shut down these smaller rural installations.”

Canada Post disagrees with that assumption and themselves appeared unaware of any status change for Rossland and Trail.

“I can tell you that we are not closing any post offices and do not have any plans to close the Rossland post office,” detailed Au. “Our doors are open and will remain open. We’re still selling stamps and sorting mail in these post offices. I call them post offices myself. Nothing has changed.”

When pressed as to whether or not they are still considered post off clarify, Au replied. “Well, to me it’s still a post office. There is no difference. It’s the same office, doing the same thing in the same building, so I don’t really know what the union is talking about there.”

According to Evans, there will be a definite drop in service levels in Trail but no noticeable change in Rossland.

“Well we lost two full time positions in Trail that went to night shift in Castlegar.” Now if you want to mail a letter across the street in Rossland or Trail those letters go to Castlegar, get trucked there and then trucked back to Rossland and Trail the next morning. It just makes no sense. As far as wickets go, wicket service in Trail will have longer line-ups with the two full time positions gone. Rossland will pretty well stay the same in terms of manpower and employees.”
Canada Post’s reasoning behind making the change was to save money through making their mail sorting process more efficient. They deny that any jobs in Trail have been lost and state that there will be no noticeable changes to the customer.

“We have to remain competitive,” said Au. “Our customers will see the same service. No one will lose their job. It’s a win-win situation. No one has lost their job in Trail and one full time position was created in Trail. One half time position was eliminated in Trail. This half position was eliminated because of low mail volume. As for any delays in service, that is absolutely untrue. There are no changes to our service commitment. Our two day commitment to local mail delivery--and usually the norm is next day service--will be maintained.”
Looking at it from the union’s perspective, Evans sees a number of loop holes in the Canada Post charter that will now be able to be exploited given the status change from official post offices to installations.

“They way we look at it, it’s actually costing them more. A lot of clauses in our contracts relate to post offices and not installations. Myself, I’m a letter carrier. I’m able to go to Castlegar now and take voluntary overtime. I couldn’t do that before. Now they have to pay me transportation costs, and it takes me longer to deliver mail there because I don’t know where I’m going. There are all kinds of clauses like that.”

Canada Post and the Postal Workers Union in Trail have clearly taken different stances on the issue and what it actually means to the employees and communities of Rossland and Trail. When asked what the motivation behind their media release warning of possible post office closures, Evans replied, “We want to start a fight here and get people riled up. People need to know this and stand up and do something about it. All we’re doing is making notice to people of what is going on here otherwise they’d have no idea until it was gone. We want people to contact Alex Atamanenko and let him know that their post office is a vital part of the local community.”

When contacted on the issue, staff at the Rossland Post Office /installation refused comment.

For now the Rossland Post Office will remain open and operating just as it was prior to the consolidation of sorting operations to Castlegar. Whether or not there is an underlying plan to eventually close the office remains to be seen.