Back in October, I wrote an article on how Canadian postal workers gave their union a 95% strike mandate.
The most recent collective agreement between the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Canada Post actually expired in 2022, but the two parties agreed to a 2-year extension, which itself ended in January 2024, over a year ago.
Contract extensions are a tactic employers use to avoid collective bargaining. Workers get a “new” contract but with very few improvements.
Bargaining for their new agreement began a year and a half ago, in November 2023.
Over a period of 6 months or so, Canada Post had tabled several proposals that would take away worker benefits and create a 2-tier structure where new workers would get less than current workers.
By the time August 2024 rolled around, Canada Post had refused to reverse their stance on these rollbacks and had yet to present any wage offers.
As a result, CUPW filed two notices of dispute with the federal minister of labour, triggering a conciliation process. The federal government appointed two conciliation officers, kicking off the 60-day conciliation period, which ended on 12 October. This was followed by a 21-day cooling-off period, which itself ended on 2 November.
In September, CUPW announced strike vote meetings in September and October. And that brings us to the 95% strike mandate I mentioned earlier.
That strike vote prompted Canada Post to finally table a wage proposal: 10% over 4 years. That works out to 2.5% per year on average. They got 13.4% over 6 years, or an annual average increase of 2.23%, which is lower than what they offered for the new contract.
However, during the period that these workers were receiving a 13.4% wage increase, inflation rose by 22.44%, leaving the workers with a cut to real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—of 9.04%.
Going into bargaining, these workers were already more than 9% behind when adjusting for inflation. 10% over the entire contract will barely be enough to catch up from that, let alone be enough to cover inflation last year, this year, next year, and the final yeas of the contract.
That’s why the workers were asking for 12.65% in the first year and 4.5% in year two, with further discussions on the length of the agreement and what the rest of the increases will look like.
In October, Canada Post added an extra 1.5% onto their original proposal, but 11.5% still falls short of making up for lost wages and covering the increase in inflation over the new contract.
That wasn’t enough, and the workers went on strike last November.
Originally, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers planned to implement a rolling strike, which would mean only certain workers would strike, not all of them. However, Canada Post had different plans and responded by locking out everyone, thereby shutting down the entire system.
The lockout disrupted the system far more than a rolling strike would have. In fact, according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, small- and medium-sized businesses were losing $75 million a day because of the lockout.
That economic impact put pressure on Justin Trudeau, who was prime minster at the time, and his government to intervene, and they did just that, after the lockout lasted for over a month.
Last December, Steven MacKinnon, the so-called labour minister under Trudeau’s administration, sent the labour dispute to the Canada Industrial Relations Board.
He asked them to look into the stalemate and if they determine that the parties are truly at an impasse, they were order the lockout (and the strike) over, and the workers were to return to work under the current collective agreement, which was to be extended to May 2025.
The CIRB did just that. That extension was set for 22 May 2025, which is tomorrow. MacKinnon also commissioned Willaim Kaplan to compile an industrial inquiry and make recommendations on how the two parties should proceed. That report was due last Thursday, a week before the contract extension expired.
That brings us to today.
Last week, Kaplan published his inquiry after meeting several times with CUPW and Canada Post in an effort to write his report and also to help mediate contract negotiations.
The report overwhelmingly falls on the side of the employer, according to the CUPW.
In a statement published to their website last Friday, the union summarized the commissioner’s 7 recommendations:
- Revise the Postal Charter’s delivery standards, end door-to-door delivery, except for businesses
- End the moratorium on post office closures and conversion to community mailboxes
- Collective agreements should include all language that was agreed to prior to the strike and what was agreed to in near-final tentative agreements. The parties should also work on narrowing the differences on issues where they are close.
- For weekend delivery and extra volume during the week, introduce part-time positions with the same working conditions and rates of pay of regular workers, pro rata benefits, and pension — but must not be gig jobs
- In the Urban collective agreement, allow for assigning of work for all hours paid
- Create a dynamic routing pilot and implement it with the intention of allowing for daily fluctuation in volumes
- Create a simpler mechanism for stamp price increases
CUPW claims that these recommendations “amount to service cuts, contracting out, and major rollbacks”.
Kaplan’s report put forward 3 paths the two parties could follow after the extension expires tomorrow:
- Canada Post could put a final offer for workers to vote on
- Imposed or agreed to interest arbitration
- A strike or lockout, but with the assurance from the Government that it will not interfere
The union’s preference is for the first path in the list; they want to negotiate a new contract that they can then bring to the workers to vote on.
According to an email sent out on Monday from Canada Post, CUPW has given them notice that they intend to strike tomorrow night at midnight.
Nowhere in that email or in one they released last week did they mention their thoughts on the inquiry, nor how they intended to proceed with negotiations.
I guess we’ll see whether Canada Post will get back to the bargaining table with a serious offer to avoid another work stoppage or instead implement a country-wide lockout like last time and disrupt the national economy again.
