When the Christmas mail rush was becoming a thing of the past

The holidays were once an extra busy time at the post office, but in 1979 that seemed to be changing.

"The post office says it's partly because it's become much more efficient," said Knowlton Nash, host of CBC's The National, in December 1979.

"It's also because we don't use the mails the way we used to."

Reporter Frank Hilliard contrasted pictures of hectic post office operations during the "Christmas mail rush" in previous years with more placid modern scenes.     

'Holiday crush'

"This the way the post office used to be at Christmastime: tons of mail, thousands of additional workers," said Hilliard, as enormous sacks were seen on a conveyor belt in a grimy industrial setting.

The post office would even lease extra office space to handle the "holiday crush" of cards, letters and packages. 

"In Toronto alone, 8,000 people used to be hired at Christmas to process more than 15 million pieces of mail a day," said the reporter.

But now, fewer of those sacks were being handled by fewer workers in a gleaming yet still industrial workplace, and volumes were down about seven per cent — a trend that Hilliard said had been happening for the past "four or five years." 

"We can take part of the credit, with better planning, better management, better use of our mechanized facilities," said post office spokesman David Toms, who also credited "lower volumes" of mail.

But Hilliard said the letter carriers' union was unhappy with an effect of those lower volumes: they were being "refused" what until then had been "the usual overtime before Christmas," and that amounted to a "speed-up" for workers.

'From one crisis to the next'

"It's not a problem that the general public has to worry about," said Bob McGarry, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. "As long as management will allow them in to move it, they'll move that mail."

But he suggested management might not actually want the mail to move.

That perspective highlighted an ongoing problem for the post office and its workers.  

"While the mail is moving, post office labour relations continue to stagger from one crisis to another," said Hilliard. "In the new year there will be another crisis as the inside postal workers bargain for a contract."

To illustrate his point, he held up a CUPW newsletter with the headline: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES.