That Postal Strike in Canada

A catastrophe for small businesses

When I was driving home from a gig last night of reading tarot cards at a private birthday party, my car engine light came on.

The warm, happy glow of the evening was destroyed in seconds.

The worry about what was wrong and, more importantly, how am I going to pay for it haunted me all night long.

My little car is ten years old. I need it to get to tarot gigs and to go back and forth to a faraway city to deal with my parents’ estate (almost weekly this past year) and to do other gigs. I was just booked for FOUR days of TV work (at minimum Ontario wage, boo!) an hour away in each direction at the end of the week and next week. I’ve not done background work since before my father died two years ago, and it was super fortuitous that my agent called with a gig about a show that I was on two years ago, the last time I worked as BG, actually, because they wanted some of the people in a scene I was in, to be in it again. That was weird when I was just thinking about getting back into BG work since the estate stuff is nearly wrapped up, (in THAT city), don’t get me started about the other whole pile of this and that in another country that has to happen, but the next round of estate stuff won’t be a full-time job (with no pay) like things were this past year…

So, I got up early this morning and panicked and drove to Mr. Lube to get that light checked out. My bank account is beyond empty, the credit cards are screaming, and I hoped so hard it was nothing huge.

I drove by picketers for one of the several strikes that are going on right now.

Once again, I had conflicting thoughts about this postal strike that is going on in Canada.

As you can tell, I have a few income streams, all of them tiny, and I’m hoping that this Substack may one day become another income stream once I’m able to be more consistent now that the overwhelming, time-consuming estate obligations are winding down.

A recent income stream that has been pleasing me has been my Poshmark Canada store. I’m about a year and a half old on there. I’m not a reseller. I don’t buy stuff to resell. I’m selling my own stuff as I’m super downsizing.

I live in a tiny apartment and have a storage unit full of stuff from when I had larger living quarters. The more I dealt with the parental estate stuff, the more I realized I needed to completely downsize so that my children don’t have the nightmare that I’m going through about what do I do with so much stuff that I have no room for even if I did want it. Don’t get me wrong, my dad got rid of mountains of stuff once mom’s disease progressed as she was the packrat, so things that were left in the house were pretty good, boxed and labelled and no stupid stuff. He was still working on it all when he dropped dead out of the blue. But what remained was still a lot when I had room for none of it.

My Poshmark Canada store is my stuff, a little bit of my kids’ stuff, a tiny bit of the parents’ stuff they gave me to sell before dad died and mom had late-stage Alzheimer’s, a little bit of friends' donations to my cause. I’ve bought a couple of things here and there to resell but I’m trying to get rid of stuff, not create a store. I do not want to walk among boxes forever. I’ve donated massive amounts of my stuff and my parents’ stuff to charity.

My Poshmark store has been gaining momentum, and I’m even a Posh Ambassador II level, which is the highest level of Poshing.

My store has almost paid my rent for several months now. I had hoped to finally get ahead this holiday season, to pay down some of the screaming credit cards, and had even booked a little trip in February to get away from the horrible Ontario winters for the first time in my life, thinking that things were looking up.

But now, all that has come crashing down.

There is a postal strike, Canada-wide.

And on Poshmark Canada, you can only ship through Canada Post. You can’t use any other service.

So I’m one of the thousands of small businesses that is being affected by the strike. And it sucks.

I know a couple of people who are hoping to go away over the holidays, and they are waiting, along with 85,000 other people, to get their passports so they can do just that. Passport renewals are held up. And phone lines have hours-long waits just to phone to arrange to pick it up, if possible.

Canada Post has had a year to negotiate, and it was all squandered. Now everyone is on strike. This is not a rotating strike. It’s a complete standstill. Mail and packages already in the system are trapped there until there’s a resolution. It’s been a week, and things are already a mess. I doubt this will end before Christmas.

The postal workers want better conditions and a 22 percent wage hike.

I worked at a college for ten years. My position died during the pandemic lockdown years, but I picked up some work as a union secretary during the lockdowns. We were capped at something crazy like 1 percent wage hikes because of Doug Ford destroying the ability to get higher wages in the collective agreement. It was a joke and still is. I don’t work there anymore so don’t know what has been going on the past couple of years.

Remember how I said I was going to do some BG work this week and next for minimum wage? Our minimum wage in Ontario is $17.20 (I think). That is disgusting. I remember marching before the pandemic for a minimum of $20 an hour. Everything was on track for that to happen then Doug Ford got into power and slashed minimum wage and it was around $14 for the longest time.

Have you been to the store lately? I see random items like Listerine for twelve bucks, a bag of chips for seven and those are “luxury” items I guess because when you’re making minimum wage, you can barely afford anything in Ontario.

I’d like a 22 percent wage increase on anything. Hey, how about on my royalties? But of course, someone has to actually buy one of my books first!

I support the right to strike.

I support most of what the postal workers are striking for.

I think Canada Post needs to cut some of its postal rates and be a seven-day-a-week service.

But man, the impact on all of the small businesses across the nation is devastating.

People who rely solely on their small business streams are screwed.

Postal strikes tend to drag on for weeks, and this one will, too.

Poshmark Canada has not given any good advice or alternatives. They want us to carry on like normal. How can we sell things and not ship them? We can’t use any other services to ship because of how Poshmark Canada is set up.

I’m beginning to explore moving some more stuff to eBay, but I didn’t want to be a crosslister. However, I might just have to be since on eBay, we can use FedEx and other services. I don’t have any momentum on eBay. I’ve sold one item on there in a year.

The hits keep coming for workers, for businesses, for just trying to live a life in a big city in Canada.

Well, the good news about the car is that after the mechanic checked the computer, he reset the system, and the engine light hasn’t returned.

The mechanic said that sometimes the engine lights go on for no real reason. But to return if it comes on again. He said I’m safe to drive my six-hour drive tomorrow even if the engine light comes back on because of what the diagnostics said.

That’s a bit of a relief, but still…

I’m dancing as fast as I can to earn an income at my age, and I have no government support. When I get knocked down, I get up again, but it’s a struggle when you’re dependent on others to keep the business running. At least my car is running so I can get to my jobs.

I won’t get into how I’m waiting for my new driving glasses in the mail either…

Edited to add: Shout out to Mr. Lube for running diagnostics and resetting the computer and didn’t charge me a dime!