Solid Majority (71%) Say Canada Post Should Not Give in to Union Demands

Ottawa, Ontario - A solid majority of more than seven in ten (71%) Canadians do not think Canada Post should give in to the Canadian Union of Postal Worker's demands in order to prevent a strike. In fact, regardless of what could happen in a dispute, a majority (54%) of Canadians think Canada Post should stand firm and not give in to the union's demands.

More than eight in ten (85%) believe that employees of Canada Post generally have good working conditions with regard to their entire pay, benefits and job security package. In fact, when the three components are looked at separately, a solid majority of Canadians say employees of Canada Post have good working conditions with regard specifically to each of pay (82%), benefits (78%) and job security (73%). Three quarters of Canadians (74%) believe that overall, postal workers are better off than the average worker.

Based on what they personally have heard about the dispute, Canadians are significantly more likely to say that Canada Post is being more fair and reasonable than the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (43 versus 18%, 27% don't know, and a further 12% say neither side is being fair and reasonable). And, should a strike occur, half of Canadians (49%) say they would be inconvenienced by disruptions to mail delivery.

These are some of the findings from an Angus Reid Group poll conducted on behalf of Canada Post. The telephone survey was conducted among 1500 Canadian adults between September 23rd and 30th, 1997. A sample of this size has an associated margin of error of 1772.5 percentage points, nineteen times out of twenty.

This Canada-wide poll was conducted by telephone between September 23rd and 30th, 1997, among a representative cross-section of 1500 adult Canadians.

The data were statistically weighted to ensure the sample's age composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to the 1996 Census data.

With a national sample of 1500, one can say with 95 percent certainty that the results are within 1772.5 percentage points of what they would have been had the entire adult Canadian population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within the various sub-groupings of the survey population.

For further information, contact:

Media Relations
Canada Post Corporation
(613) 734-8888

Dr. Darrell Bricker
Executive Vice President
Angus Reid Group, Inc.
(613) 241-5802