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The Observer | Saturday, September 20, 2008
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»23 VOLUME 13, ISSUE 38
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2008
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PRICELESS
Football season gets underway at EDSS PHOTO | MARC MIQUEL HELSEN
THE KIcK OFF EDSS football players, including Cole Martin, got in one last practice Thursday afternoon prior to Friday’s season opener at home against St. Davids. Both the junior and senior teams were in play.
Status quo for the Elmira post office Canada Post nixes idea of retail postal outlet in new Shoppers Drug Mart location at Arthur and Church MARC MIQUEL HELSEN Despite the writing on the wall, Elmira’s post office will stay put. The Canada Post sign on the Shoppers Drug Mart store at the corner of Church and Arthur Streets in Elmira came down Thursday, as a second postal outlet will not be opened at the new drugstore, said a spokesperson for Canada Post. “There are no plans for any type of a retail outlet in Elm-
ira outside of the post office,” said Tom Creech. In June, the national bureau of Canada Post applied to open a second outlet in the relocated Shoppers Drug Mart at the corner of Arthur and Church streets. Canada Post and Shoppers Drug Mart have a longstanding working relationship, with numerous joint ventures across the country. When a Shoppers store is slated to open, Canada Post typically studies any potential partnership opportunities. The prospect of a new retail
outlet was cause for concern amongst Elmira postal workers worried that contracting the service to a private business would leave the Arthur Street office at risk of closing. The union argued that although such outlets often provide longer service, they cannot offer the quality attention customers receive at the official post office. As the new 14,000-square-foot Shoppers structure took shape in June, Elmira postal union representatives scrambled to put together a counter propos-
al to the franchise idea. Canada Post’s collective agreement with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) states that the national office must give the former 90 days to suggest other options before it can go ahead with opening outlets in private businesses. The CUPW proposal argued that if providing longer hours was the issue, then there was no reason why the current outlet couldn’t extend its hours of service. The proposal calculated the projected cost of
increasing hours, factoring in wages, benefits, as well as the cost of dealing with any potential parking issues, and presented its conclusions in dollars and cents. “Our counterproposal that we put in was significantly less than what they would have to pay to put in that franchise,” said John Wastell, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (Local 560) in Kitchener, which represents the Elmira facility. See POST OFFICE page »02
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