The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), has officially gone on strike, and leaves the question if non-profit organizations around London may or may not be affected.
“We’re a neighborhood resource center, so a lot of the clients we work with and support, may be in receipt of OW, ODSP, government assistance checks and so on because not all of them have direct deposits.” Says Executive Director Elizabeth Rodriguez for Luso community services, a local non-profit located in London.
“They won’t be impacted because I believe I read Canada Post has made a commitment to ensure that those kinds of checks are still processed.”
Rodriguez explains the reason behind non-profit organizations relying on delivery systems like Canada Post.
“In terms of us as an organization, it’s more about receiving our payables, mailing out our receipts and sending out checks for our payables, that’s going to be impacted. Again, we’re a neighborhood resource center, a non-profit, so in some cases we are still issuing checks and mailing them to our vendors because we require two signatures on everything.”
Luso logo (credit: London child & youth network)
She continues to discuss how even though it might not affect their organization as heavily, other non-profits might be at danger.
“It’s requiring us to look at paying things online and putting a process in place. It impacts us that way, but we’re not one of the highly affected organizations as I’m sure other non-profit businesses that are mailing out lots of invoices for billable hours might be impacted.”
As Canada Post workers remain on strike, alternative options must be considered by non-profits like Luso community services.
“If we had to, we would probably look at using FedEx or local couriers if it was something that we needed to send out but within the city, we probably would be reaching out to couriers. Regardless if it’s Canada Post or not, we have to make sure our bills get paid then we get everybody set up with electronic payments, which again is an impact for us because we have some of our vendors that are still sending out checks, and it requires us to set them up on electronic funds.”
“Payment requires us to build in some extra steps on the back end because as I said we’re a charity and we require two signatures on every check. We need a step in place to make sure invoices are being paid and are still overseen by two individuals within our board of directors.”
The decision for the strike came after Canada Post Corporation (CPC), refused to negotiate after the union had released a 72-hour strike notice causing the union to make the hard choice of going on strike as of last Friday.
Over 55,000 workers have joined the strike across Canada, including 2 picket line here in London located at Highbury and Oxford intersection as well as Wellington and Commissioner’s road.
