Canada’s minister of jobs and families, Patty Hajdu, said Thursday she will put Canada Post’s latest contract offer to unionized workers, bypassing the Canadian Union of Postal Workers’ leadership in an effort to break an 18-month negotiating stalemate that has led mail carriers to refuse overtime work and slowed service.
Canada Post two weeks ago requested the Canadian government intervene to conduct a formal vote of rank-and-file union members after the CUPW rejected the corporation’s “best-and-final” offer. Canada Post’s ask suggests it wasn’t confident that union executives were fairly presenting management’s proposals to the membership.
The vote will be administered by the Canada Industrial Relations Board in the near future to give urban, suburban and rural mail carriers the chance to ratify Canada Post’s offer.
“We welcome the minister’s decision as it will provide employees with the opportunity to have a voice and vote on a new collective agreement at a critical point in our history,” the state-owned postal operator said in a statement.
The CUPW is recommending members vote no on the proposed contract. It accused the government
“The Minister’s decision is yet another assault on our collective bargaining rights,” the union said, referring to the use in December of a provision in labor law to pause CUPW’s strike after 32 days and establishing a commission to review Canada Post’s business situation. The commission’s recommendations last month largely mirrored Canada Post’s strategic plan.
“These repeated government attacks have poisoned the bargaining process,” the CUPW said Thursday. “The government’s actions have not helped to bring this impasse closer to a resolution. They have only pushed us further down the road. In all instances, the government has assisted with the employer. . . We will not stand by as the government and Canada Post work together to try to undermine our hard-fought rights, gut our collective agreements and re-write them on their own terms. Postal workers know how to fight back. We’ve done it before, and we’re ready to do it again.”
Canada Post had a pre-tax loss of $611 million last year, bringing the total loss over seven years to $2.7 billion. A 32-day CUPW strike late last year significantly hurt revenues and parcel volumes still have not recovered. Canada Post’s business model has been under pressure for most of the century as people shifted to digital communications over mail and private parcel carriers entered the market.
Canada Post’s final offer includes a wage hike of 13.6% over four years, a $500 to $1,000 signing bonus, a higher cost of living allowance and operational changes based on recommendations from a government commission aimed at turning around the financial decline. The changes include pilot testing dynamic instead of static routes based on changing volumes.
The CUPW has been pushing the government to facilitate binding arbitration to resolve the labor dispute, but Canada Post has rejected the idea.
(UPDATED at 8:40 p.m. ET)
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