As Canada Posts’ labour dispute continues, Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Tom Thomson says there is growing concern from local businesses, with many looking for alternative ways to get their orders out, in a timely and affordable manner.
“The longer the strike goes on, and it’s been going on for a while, the bigger the impact it’ll have.” said Thomson.
“And it’s not just for people that are doing e-commerce. A lot of people still use regular mail to mail and receive payment for invoices, or to wait for a cheque in the mail.”
“Billing can be affected, invoicing can be affected, and certainly package delivery at this time of the year is certainly a major impact.”
Thomson says local businesses continue to foster resilience in the face of adversity.
“These businesses have been rocked by a lot of different things over the last four years with the COVID pandemic and having to shift ways of doing business. Locals ramped up their e-commerce sales, because bricks and mortar were difficult to come in and visit sometimes.”
“So, now you’ve got people that have shifted to an e-commerce platform, plus their bricks and mortar and the impact of a labour dispute is even more significant”
“And as much as we hate to think about it, there’s other issues like port strikes that have happened in Vancouver and Montreal, that was impacting shipments arriving from off seas and getting distributed to the interior and into local and regional stores.”
“There are a lot of challenges for businesses and just one more thing to think about with the postal strike continuing.”
Thomson says the best way to support local is to shop local this festive season.
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