CANADA POST SEEKS MEDIATOR, VIOLENCE ON PICKET
Canada Post asked the federal government
to appoint a mediator to help end an increasingly violent
series of strikes by the country's letter carriers.
    The government is expected to respond quickly to the
request that was made after the union formally rejected the
corporation's latest offer to settle the four-day-old dispute.
    The state-run postal service also said it would halt the
use of replacement workers that the union has blamed for the
trouble on the picket line.
    "We have become increasingly concerned that the safety of
our employees, both striking employees and replacement workers,
is at risk," Canada Post negotiator Harold Dunstan told
reporters at a downtown Ottawa hotel.
    Robert McGarry, president of the 20,000 member Letter
Carriers Union, told reporters he and other union leaders would
consider suspending the walkouts for a week while the mediator
is involved.
    In a bid to step up pressure on management, letter carriers
walked out in Toronto today where some 50 pct of the country's
mail is sorted.
    Workers also set up picket lines in other populous cities
in southern Ontario, but went back to work in most other
centers across Canada.
    There have been several arrests, property damage, and
sometimes violent clashes between strikers and replacement
workers whom the corporation hired to try and keep the mail
moving.
    The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), which
represents postal employees who are not letter carriers and
which is not on strike, said one of its workers was stabbed and
is now in the hospital after a scuffle broke out with a
replacement worker in Toronto early today.
    Police, however, said they had no report of a stabbing.
    CUPW President Jean-Claude Parrot called for the
resignation of Andre Harvie, minister responsible for Canada
Post, for condoning the use of the so-called strikebreakers.
    "The federal government has (the) blood of workers on its
hands in this postal strike," Parrot told reporters at the
union's Ottawa headquarters.
 Reuter
