Silver Jewelry from Åland: first mail in over a month

A pair of 2024 booklet stamps from Åland featuring silver jewelry art. The stamps make use of silver foil to give the text a nice shimmer.

Other than ad mail, this is the first letter to be found in my mailbox since the postal strike ended on December 17th. It would have been nice to open my mailbox on that date and find a month's worth of covers waiting for me. But that wasn't the case. It's going to take a while for Canada Post to get through their backlog. Probably a very long while. 

The strike was ended by government intervention, after they determined the two side were too far apart in their negotiations. But it's only temporary. Unionized Canada Post employees are allowed to strike again in May when their temporary work agreement ends. 

Canada Post Strike - Waiting for a Christmas Miracle

We are now into the fourth week of a postal workers strike in Canada. The union wants higher wages, better benefits and job security. And Canada Post wants to compete with all the gig-worker driven delivery services that have sprung up over the last few years which means they need more output from a cheaper labour force. Canada Post is a crown corporation which means its direction is overseen by the government but it operates on its own. And for the last 6 years it has been losing money. Last year it lost almost $750 million (CDN).

 
This strike has gone on without any clear sign of a pending resolution. Unlike previous postal strikes, this one doesn't seem to be getting the same public attention. Small businesses and rural customers are feeling it the most. But the outcry over the lack of mail delivery just doesn't seem to be there this time around. So maybe this is the tipping point for Canada Post. The two sides are so far apart in their negotiations that it will likely take government intervention to get the mail moving again.

I really miss checking my mailbox everyday. Even if the strike ends tomorrow, it would take several weeks... months perhaps, to clear the backlog. No circuits coming in or going out. No stamp exchanges. Not even junk mail. It sucks.