Turning up the pressure, Canada Post announces it is moving to three times a week delivery in most cities because rotating strikes have slashed mail volumes in half.
As Canada Post made its announcement curbing service, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers announced rotating strikes across Canada in small communities beginning at 11:30 pm EDT.
The walkouts will affect four locations in Ontario: Thunder Bay, Hearst, Brantford and St. Thomas. As well, workers are off the job in Labrador City, Labrador; Acadie-Bathurst, New Brunswick; Summerside, P.E.I.; Ste.Therese, Quebec; Ste Jerome, Quebec; Flin Flon, Manitoba; Yellowknife, Northwest Territories; Whitehorse, Yukon; and Vernon, B.C.
Canada Post said home delivery will continue on Thursday, but starting next week, most people who are served by mail carriers will only get delivery of letters, ad mail and small parcels on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Large parcels and priority mail will continue to be delivered on a five-day a week basis.
“Our volumes have dropped off the cliff,” said Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton, saying the company must contain costs as revenues are falling. “The union’s rotating strikes are having a profound impact.”
Canada Post estimates that instead of delivering its usual 40 million items a day, it’s only about 20 million.
“We need to maintain and create good jobs, not cut back on jobs in our communities,” said Denis Lemelin, CUPW National President and chief negotiator, said in a news release high quality business cards. “Smaller communities also benefit from having access to increased services at their post offices. We are asking Canada Post to address these demands.”
Employees will only be paid for the hours they work. Staffing at mail processing plants will also be adjusted to deal with falling volumes.
Post office operating hours and access to post office boxes will be unchanged. Pickups from street letter boxes on major streets will continue as usual.
Canadians who live in rural Canada will continue with daily service because their carriers are covered by a separate contract.
The strike by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers began Friday, with 24- to 48-hour shutdowns across the country. The rotating strikes began in Calgary and Edmonton overnight, after walkouts in Winnipeg, Hamilton, Montreal, Victoria and Moncton.
The union has not hit the Toronto area yet, which includes two of the country’s busiest processing plants, the mail sorting facility on Eastern Ave. and the parcel sorting facility in Mississauga.
It has not ruled out a full nationwide strike at some point, but with rotating strikes, most employees have been able to draw a paycheque. The company’s latest move means their wages will shrink.
Talks are continuing at an Ottawa hotel, but Canada Post said little progress was being made.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers was not immediately available for a response.
Greater Toronto Area home sales and prices increased in May, making it the second best month ever on record, according to figures released Friday.
The Toronto Real Estate Board reported (PDF) 10,046 sales, up six per cent from May of 2010.
Average prices were also up by 9 per cent to $485,520, compared with $446,593 in 2010.
Strongest price growth was for single-detached homes in the City of Toronto.
The union that represents Toronto
Japan’s consumer prices in April rose for the first time in more than two years on a temporary spike in energy and tobacco prices, the government said Friday.
Japan’s core consumer price index, which excludes fresh food, climbed 0.6 percent last month from a year earlier, marking the first year-on-year increase since December 2008, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said.
The rise in Japanese consumer prices was due to a jump in gasoline and tobacco prices. The ministry said education costs were also higher in April. On a month-on-month basis, Japan’s core consumer price index was up 0.4 percent last month.
But economist Hiroshi Watanabe at the Daiwa Institute of Research said the April increase in consumer prices does not mean Japan’s economy has emerged from deflation.
“The April results were mainly lifted by temporary factors, such as a surge in tobacco prices. Overall, Japan’s economy still remains under deflationary pressure as the economy has yet to post a steady recovery,” he said.
The world’s No. 3 economy has been battling periods of deflation _ or a steady decline in prices _ since the 1990s. Deflation is a burden as it can hamper economic growth by depressing company profits, sparking wage cuts and causing consumers to postpone purchases. It also can increase debt burdens.
Faced with tumbling output and exports following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Japan’s economy recently slipped into a recession after contracting at an annualized rate of 3.7 percent in the January-March quarter.
Stock futures are down sharply as new warnings about European finances stoke fears about that region’s debt crisis. The euro dipped to its lowest level in two months.
Ahead of the opening bell, Dow Jones industrial average futures are down 97, or 0.8 percent, at 12,369. S&P 500 index futures are down 10, or 0.8 percent, at 1,317. Nasdaq 100 futures are down 20, or 0.8 percent, at 2,324.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s cut its outlook Saturday on Italy’s debt to negative from stable.
Financial markets in Spain are down sharply after a defeat for its ruling Socialist party caused investors to fear that the government cannot solve its public finance issues.
On Friday, the Fitch ratings agency downgraded Greece’s debt rating further into junk status.
Earlier this month, Bell and Quebecor, two giants in the Canadian broadcasting and telecom landscape, became embroiled in a dispute over Sun News Network, the recently launched all-news television station.
At first glance, the dispute appeared to be little more than a typical commercial fight over how much Bell should pay to Quebecor to carry the Sun News Network channel on its satellite television package. When the parties were unable to reach agreement, Bell removed Sun News, leaving a placeholder message indicating
LinkedIn priced its IPO at $45 per share to set up the first stock market debut among a fraternity of Internet networking services that’s captivating investors.
The pricing completed late Wednesday marks the final step before LinkedIn Corp.’s shares are available in the public market for the first time in the company’s eight-year history. Shares are expected to begin trading Thursday morning.
Most analysts believe the shares are likely to rise Thursday, even though LinkedIn raised the IPO price by 30 percent from its initial target of $32 to $35 per share paydayloan.
The IPO puts a $4.3 billion market value on LinkedIn, the highest for a U.S. Internet company taking its first bow on Wall Street since Google Inc. went public nearly seven years ago.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest is an embarrassment that won’t derail attempts to bolster aid for Greece as officials head to Brussels for crisis talks, economists said.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, had been scheduled to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel today and then attend discussions with euro-area finance ministers in Brussels tomorrow as officials consider further support to stave off a Greek default. He has been charged with attempted rape and a criminal sex act on a woman in a New York hotel. Strauss-Kahn denies the charges.
“Its incredibly embarrassing, and not the IMF’s or Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s finest hour, but I don’t think this ought to undermine what’s going on,” Peter Westaway, chief European economist at Nomura International Plc in London, said in an interview. “I don’t think it will affect negotiations on Greece. In the end, issues for Greece and policy making are more important than that and they’ll carry on.”
European officials are working to prevent the region’s first default as Greek ministers plead for terms to be relaxed on 110 billion-euros ($155 billion) of aid from the IMF and European Union in a debt crisis that has also engulfed Ireland and Portugal. Economists said that talks to reconsider Greece’s aid terms are taking place between institutions rather than individuals and so can endure such turmoil.
“It’s not a fatal blow to the Greek situation,” James Nixon, chief European economist at Societe Generale in London, said in an interview. “Any of these negotiations are larger than a single person.”
EU-Led Aid
The Greek government said in a statement that it “operates institutionally and continues without interruption implementing the program for the country to exit the crisis.” The EU has led efforts to aid Greece and has contributed two-thirds of the funds committed to the rescue of the nation’s economy.
The IMF will be represented at Monday’s euro-area finance ministers’ meeting by Deputy Managing Director Nemat Shafik, who oversees the organization’s work in a number of EU nations, IMF spokesman Bill Murray said in an e-mailed statement today.
Seventeen nations use the euro.
Greece is seeking an extension to the loans and has argued Europe should issue common bonds to stem the region’s fiscal crisis. Eighty-five percent of those surveyed last week in a Bloomberg Global Poll said the country won’t honor its debts, with majorities predicting the same fate for Portugal and Ireland.
Greek Position
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on May 13 opposed a debt restructuring, appealing to claims made by the IMF that the country’s debt “is sustainable.” Germany opposes a common-bond issue, saying such a move would weaken member states’ incentives to cut their deficits.
It’s too early to say whether Greece needs more help with its debt crisis, though “extra measures” may be needed if the country can’t return to financial markets next year as planned under the European-led aid program agreed last year, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in an interview with ARD television in Berlin.
It’s “disappointing” that Strauss-Kahn’s meeting with Merkel is cancelled because the IMF had been pressing for stronger measures that may involve the possibility of a restructuring of Greek debt, Societe General’s Nixon said.
“The meeting could have been quite important in injecting some realism in the discussions and presumably now that voice won’t be heard,” he said. “The IMF have been pushing for a more realistic position, and presumably the gravity of that voice has been lost.”
‘Leadership Vacuum’
Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that Strauss-Kahn’s arrest may still unsettle investors at a time of tension because of the region’s debt crisis.
“Just the perception that DSK’s departure could create a leadership vacuum at the IMF and shift the institution’s attitude towards Greece and other weak European countries may be enough to roil markets and raise uncertainty at a vulnerable time for the euro zone,” he said.
Hotel Incident
The charges against Strauss-Kahn stem from an incident that allegedly occurred yesterday against a 32-year-old female at a Sofitel hotel in midtown Manhattan, the New York Police Department said in an e-mailed statement early today. He will appear in a Manhattan court later today, police Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne told BBC television in an interview.
Strauss-Kahn played a key role in efforts to stem the European debt crisis which started last year in Greece, with a pledge to contribute about a third of future bailouts in the region by the EU. His term at the IMF is scheduled to expire next year. Speculation in France had mounted that he would leave early to stand for president.
The charges against him won’t affect moves to extend aid to Portugal, which is implementing austerity measures to qualify for an international aid package of as much as 78 billion euros from the EU and IMF, said Gilles Moec, European economist at Deutsche Bank AG.
“The progress can continue and there should not be a change in its dynamics,” he said in an interview.
Japan’s government decided Friday to set up a fund to help pay damages stemming from the crisis at a tsunami-crippled nuclear plant, financed by public money and mandatory contributions from utility companies.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. expects a deluge of damage claims from those affected by the radiation-leaking Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant on the northeastern coast, whose problems constitute the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. However, the utility is not expected to be able to pay all of them.
The government’s plan, which would spread the burden for the crisis and must be referred to parliament for its expected approval, would create an entity that collects money for compensation from TEPCO and other utilities that operate nuclear power plants. The government will issue the body special bonds that can be cashed when needed to pay claims.
TEPCO earlier this week agreed to a cost-cutting reorganization, also intended to ensure its ability to pay compensation that includes creating a commission to monitor the company’s management.
Economy and Trade Minister Banri Kaieda insisted earlier this week that the new fund was not a bailout for TEPCO, but rather a way to ensure victims get paid.
“We want to avoid big changes in the electricity bills and contain (the public burden) as much as possible,” Kaieda said Friday.
TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu said he expects the plan to go into effect soon.
“Under this support scheme, while receiving support from the government, we will prepare to compensate those who are suffering in a fair and prompt manner,” he said in a statement.
Shinichi Ichikawa, the director of equity research at Credit Suisse in Tokyo, said the plan needed to achieve three goals: maintain a stable electricity supply, ease concerns of financial markets and ensure victims of the nuclear disaster would be compensated.
“It looks like it’s a good solution,” he said.
TEPCO has sought a 2 trillion yen ($24.8 billion) loan to get it through the initial emergency period. It expects to pay 50 billion yen ($620 million) in initial compensation to nearly 80,000 residents evacuated from around the radiation-leaking plant, which was hit by a giant tsunami after Japan’s massive March 11 earthquake. Overall damages are expected to be much higher.
Also Friday, the operator of a nuclear plant in central Japan began suspending operations at its reactors while it strengthens tsunami protections, under a separate agreement with the government.
The crisis at Fukushima had prompted the government to evaluate all of Japan’s 54 reactors for quake and tsunami vulnerability. The March 11 tsunami knocked out electricity and crucial cooling systems at the Fukushima plant.
That assessment led to Prime Minister Naoto Kan to request a temporary shutdown at the Hamaoka plant in Shizuoka prefecture amid concerns an earthquake with a magnitude of 8 or higher could strike central Japan sometime within 30 years. The Hamaoka facility sits above a major fault line and has long been considered Japan’s riskiest nuclear power plant fast cash online.
Chubu Electric Power Co., which supplies electricity to central Japan, including the city of Toyota, where the automaker is based, said steps to idle the No. 4 reactor at the Hamaoka plant started Friday morning. The company expects to begin halting the No. 5 reactor _ its only other operating reactor _ on Saturday.
Nuclear energy provides more than one-third of Japan’s electricity and shutting the Hamaoka plant is likely to exacerbate power shortages expected this summer. Its reactors account for more than 10 percent of Chubu’s power supply.
The government has said it will not seek similar shutdowns of any other reactors in the country.
Chubu Electric will also indefinitely delay a planned resumption of Hamaoka’s No. 3 reactor, which was shut down for regular maintenance late last year.
In a serious setback for efforts to stabilize the Fukushima plant, officials said Thursday that one of the reactors had been more heavily damaged than previously thought. The findings likely mean it will take longer than expected to restore the plant’s cooling systems. The original plan promised to bring the plant’s three troubled reactors to a cold shutdown by early next year.
Nuclear officials said that new data showed that the water level in the core of Unit 1 was much lower than expected, fully exposing what was left of the fuel rods that had partially melted in the hours and days immediately following the tsunami.
The findings _ which came after workers repaired monitoring equipment this week _ indicate that melted fuel also had fallen to a lump in the bottom of the pressure chamber and may have even slipped into the larger beaker-shaped drywell, or containment vessel.
Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama acknowledged for the first time Friday that the condition constituted a “meltdown” under the Japanese definition, which requires melted fuel to drop to the bottom of the core.
“Meltdown” is not a scientific term and the definitions for it vary, though generally a “partial meltdown” refers to the melting of fuel rods _ as has been known to have happened at Fukushima for some time _ and a “complete meltdown” can mean the pressure vessel and other containments have been breached.
Officials made it clear that the fuel had melted early on the crisis and posed no danger now, as the temperature at the bottom of the reactor was around 100 degrees Celsius.
TEPCO had adopted an unorthodox method of trying to cool Unit 1’s reactor by trying to fill the drywell with water leaking from the core. But the new information means that they will have to find a new strategy, said Goshi Hosono, a prime minister’s aide and director of the nuclear crisis task force.
“We were too optimistic,” he said.
Canadian Tire has made a friendly offer for the country
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