As they wait for end to Canada Post strike, small Manitoba businesses take delivery into their own hands
Dave Hanson, founder of the Sage Garden Greenhouses, is delivering his customers’ orders by hand, bundling packages and dropping them door-by-door ahead of the holidays.
Orders from the small business would normally be shipped to customers via Canada Post. However, the strike by more than 55,000 employees at the Crown corporation has forced Hanson and other Winnipeg shops to find alternatives so customers can get their orders on time.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Hanson said. “To go and personally deliver, it’s a joy, it was a pleasure. It’s something we’ll continue to do, but it certainly isn’t a cost-effective solution for delivery.”
On Friday, federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon sent the dispute between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to the Canada Industrial Relations Board.
MacKinnon said if the board, an independent entity, determines negotiations between the parties are at an impasse, it has been directed to order striking members back to work under the existing collective agreement.
The board could order a resumption of Canada Post activities as soon as early next week, MacKinnon said Friday.
“I’m really happy to hear that the Canada Post strike is potentially going to be resolved in short order,” Hanson said, speaking to CBC shortly after MacKinnon’s announcement.
But “clearly, the holiday season is a bust for small businesses when it comes to this,” he said, noting things like holiday cards “just haven’t been on people’s radar” this year.
He says in the last few weeks, he has hand-delivered around 30 Christmas package orders, going to “every corner in the city” on three delivery drives.
But normally, he’d have close to 100 packages sent out to customers via mail before the holidays, he said.
“There’s a 70 per cent difference there,” said Hanson — a significant gap in revenue at a key time of the year for sales.
“It just reflected in people’s uncertainty about what’s going to happen if they hit add to cart and check out, and then it ends up in the mail stream.”
Hand delivery has also been a “costly endeavour” overall, taking hours away from other aspects of running the business, Hanson said.
However, dropping off the orders is one of the few alternatives he has left to make sure it gets done effectively.
The service offered by other couriers has been overwhelmed since the start of the strike, and some of them don’t offer letter delivery, an “affordable” mail alternative for small businesses, Hanson said.
“When a key player like Canada Post is out of commission for a certain amount of time … there’s lots of ripples,” he said.
Eric Hetherington, co-owner of Bear Face General Store, a local art store on Osborne Street, said managing shipments and deliveries during the strike hasn’t been easy.
Even with the majority of purchases done in-store, Hetherington said the business decided to start delivering some of their orders within the city on Friday.
“[It’s] just like necessity … obviously the holiday season is big for sales in general,” he said.
Larger orders are being handed out by some employees while a number of customers who would get packages shipped are picking them up at the store.
“We’ll do this for as long as it happens,” Hetherington said.
“I am personally more concerned with the workers at the end of the day … It doesn’t matter if it inconveniences us at the end of the day because for those people, the stakes are higher, and it matters a lot more.”
WATCH | As postal strike continues, Winnipeg businesses take delivery into their own hands:
With no end in sight to the strike by Canada Post workers, a pair of Winnipeg businesses have decided to do their own deliveries.
Loren Remillard, president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, said not resolving the strike swiftly could affect the relationship businesses have with the Crown corporation, with trust and reliability being “eroded to the point it is not fixable.”
The window for any resolution is now too narrow to have a “major positive impact on the holiday shopping season,” Remillard said.
“It’s been very frustrating for the business community as it works so diligently to recover from a pandemic that saw so many shuttered and struggling still. But we remain hopeful.”
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