I've been at Canada Post for a very long time, over 30 years, and the idea that we are overpaid has kind of dwindled over the years.
Granted, I challenge anyone here to make $19 an hour as a temp employee—your trainer tells you not to quit your day job to deliver parcels on Sunday for Canada Post—and you live in, say, Vancouver or Toronto and be able to support a family. We are flexible.
Our rate of pay has not kept up with inflation, I'd say in the last 15 years. I have a comparison to the auto industry. In 1984, my husband at the time was hired at Chrysler Corporation. There was about 60 cents difference in our hourly rates. Currently, an auto worker in Windsor makes about $7 an hour more than we do, and that's at our top rate.
So, we are flexible. I am a retail clerk. I am all about public service. I believe that every customer I have should be given dignity and respect.
We are dealing with challenging times. People who use the post office may be disadvantaged financially, or may be from other countries and have difficulty speaking in one of the two official languages that we use in our post office. We work very hard to serve those people.