Photo: Josh Dawson

Postal workers prevent trucks from leaving the Canada Post facility on Dalhousie Drive Thursday evening.

Dozens of Kamloops postal workers organized a picket line Thursday evening and blocked trucks from leaving a Canada Post mail processing plant on Dalhousie Drive.

The pressure tactics took place at 9 p.m. — after the Canadian Union of Postal Workers issued a 72-hour strike notice at Canada Post earlier this week.

Aaron Arseneau, a Canada Post letter carrier and acting president of CUPW Kamloops, said Castanet’s trucks will not leave or enter the Crown corporation’s Dalhousie Drive facility.

“I hope this sends a strong message that we want to negotiate in good faith,” he said.

“We gave them a year to negotiate with our negotiators and they decided not to do it. They haven’t budged on any issue – health and safety, payments, benefits, pensions, anything they’re not willing to negotiate. So that’s what we were pushed towards.

The strikers blocked the two entrances to the factory with vehicles.

“We’re going to try to get them to unload or leave their trailers. They probably won’t. so we’ll let them pass eventually, but we’ll try to slow them down a little bit,” Arseneau said.

“They have nowhere to go across the country. Each repository will be locked like this.

Canada Post’s latest contract offer included annual salary increases of 11.5 percent over four years. It also offered defined benefit pension plan protection for current employees, as well as job security and health benefits.

The union rejected the proposal and announced last month that its members had voted overwhelmingly in favor of a strike if an agreement could not be reached at the bargaining table.

Arseneau said he was pleased with the turnout and felt optimistic as strikers gathered on site Thursday evening. The pressure tactics coincided with those of counterpart unions across the country.

“We are ready to fight for a contract that we deserve,” he said.

“I think things have been in our favor lately, and we have 60,000 members across Canada who are terribly frustrated that the company they work for, that some of them have devoted their entire careers to, treats them like second-class citizens.

Arseneau said the strike would continue “as long as it takes.” He said he didn’t think it would last as long as the recent months-long strike at Hudson’s Bay Company store in Kamloops at the Aberdeen Shopping Centre.

“We want to be able to bring Christmas to Canadians, right? That’s our goal,” he said.

“This is a time when Canada Post is making a lot of money, so to send the best message possible, I think it was a tactical decision.”

Arseneau said strikers will man the picket line on rotating shifts and hope more movement will be seen at the bargaining table after the national strike.

“I think we are entrenched, and we will only become more entrenched as Canada Post refuses to negotiate in good faith,” he said.

— with files from the Canadian Press