More than a week into rotating strikes by Canadian postal employees and staffing cutbacks by Canada Post, some non-profit organizations are beginning to feel the effects of reduced mail delivery.
With mail delivery slowing to a crawl, or a standstill depending on the day, organizations that rely exclusively on public donations solicited through direct mail campaigns are feeling the pinch.
"We're being impacted by 10 to 15 thousand dollars per week in either lost or delayed revenue because people aren't sending it," said Deb Steele of the Lung Association. "It's caught up in the mail or people are choosing to wait until the strike is over."
Steele says that those donations are critical to the Lung Associations administrative and research operations.
"The lung research campaign is one of the campaigns we run through the year and is very, very important in that we provide core funding to researchers in Alberta," Steele said.
Delivery of letters and parcels in Canadian cities is expected to be limited Wednesday and likely the rest of the week as the fallout from rotating postal strikes in Toronto and Montreal hits the national mail system.
Toronto and Montreal - which handle about 60 per cent of the country's mail - held rotating postal strikes on Tuesday. Both Canada Post Corp. and its striking union said there will be spillover.
"The combined impact of strikes in these areas is expected to result in major mail disruptions nationally on Tuesday, likely carrying over into Wednesday," Canada Post said in a statement.
Bev Ray, president of the Edmonton chapter of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, says the disruptions are unfortunate, but part of the process.
"We've continued to offer concessions and rollbacks and every time that happens Canada Post withdraws their demand off the table and goes back to their original demands which is cutting service, cutting jobs and cutting benefits for workers in Canada," Ray said.
With files from Shane Jones and the Canadian Press.
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