The current Canada Post job action—rotating strikes across the country since late October—reminds many of us that Canadian postal workers have long been on the front lines of fighting for workers’ rights in Canada.

Perhaps the most memorable was the 1981 strike that shut down mail service across the country. That momentous strike of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers lasted forty-two days, and was critical in the fight for paid maternity leave in Canada, something that was extremely uncommon at the time. When the postal workers won, 17 weeks of paid maternity leave became a standard in Canada, and set the stage for even more maternity benefits to come. As the Canadian Labour Congress suggests, the strike was a “tipping point,” with other Canadian unions negotiating paid maternity leave shortly thereafter.

An image of a stamp taken from Ferne Sinkins’ article in the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation Newsletter from October/November 1981 (entitled “Mail and Female“) on the strike and the gains made, calling for Ontario teachers to take the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the postal workers to negotiate for paid maternity leave.

Rise Up! holds many digital resources about the strike and its aftermath:

• A Struggle to Remember: Fighting for our Families, a documentary that includes footage from the 1981 postal workers’ strike, as well as the earlier work by the Common Front in Quebec.

• An article in the November 1980 issue of Union Women addressing the Canadian Union of Professional and Technical Employees’ (CUPTE) strike demanding maternity leave. The article ends with a prescient call to action, namely that CUPTE, comprised largely of women, and which was only two years old at the time, “has taken the lead in this fight. Let’s all work to ensure that next time they are not alone.”

• Pamphlets about fights related to gender equality by CUPW (including pamphlets on “The Coder Classification,” “Fighting for Equality: Part Timers,” and “Protection Against Discrimination.

Thirty-seven years after the 1981 strike, postal workers have been in a job action since late October, fighting for equality once again. Among other concerns, at issue is a disparity between the ways that rural and urban letter carriers are paid. Urban letter carriers–most often men–are paid by the hour, and rural letter carriers–most often women—are paid by the size of their route, resulting in rural carriers having a lower rate of hourly pay. The struggle for real pay equity continues.

What clearly emerges when we examine the history and contemporary work of the CUPW is that the union has long been leading the way in recognizing that workers’ rights and women’s rights are one and the same.

An image from Union Woman (Spring/Summer 1987). In both 1987 and 1991, CUPW engaged in rotating strikes in protest of a government plan to privatize the postal service.