Labour shortage delays Yukon mail delivery

Key takeaways: 

• Canada Post in Whitehorse expects to offer permanent positions to draw more workers.
• In extra to having up to 7 mail delivery ways unstaffed on any given day, a labor shortage has pushed Canada Post to lower the hours of its outlet on Chilkoot Way.

While neither rain, snow, sleet, or gloom of night may stop mail from being delivered, a labor shortage will.

“It is flawed right now,” stated Sébastien Bernier, Canada Post’s superintendent for Yukon and Northern B.C.

He said approximately five to seven daily delivery routes in Whitehorse are unstaffed. 

“I would say before a few weeks back; you never noticed that. If there was one route not going out, it was a great panic here, and we were trying everything to get it protected,” he stated.

The Chilkoot Waypost office in the city is now only open from 8:30 a.m. to noon every day because of the labor need, and parcels are being delayed for pick up at the postal outlet in Shoppers Drug Mart Qwanlin Mall, said, Bernier.

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He added that Yukoners could continue anticipating uncertainties in their mail delivery and requested that clients be patient.

“We’re trying to crack the case,” he stated. “I hear bad reports about the Chilkoot post office. People are impatient and putting stress on workers who have nothing to do with the circumstances.”

Expecting to use hiring incentive

Canada Post has struggled to fill jobs nationwide, and Bernier said it’d been incredibly questioning in Whitehorse since November 2021.

“We began having a problem hiring [then]. He said that people were also leaving for other jobs, and we began losing some employees,” he said.

He added very few, if any, nominees for the advertised jobs.

Source – cbc.ca