Canada Post workers picket outside the Albert Jackson Processing Centre in Scarborough, Ont., on Nov. 15.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Canada Post and its unionized workers are gearing up for a lengthy work stoppage as the two sides remain far apart at the bargaining table, jostling over wage demands and how to expand parcel delivery to weekends to compete with major couriers.
On Friday, more than 55,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers walked off the job, shutting down mail service across the country in the lead-up to the busy holiday shopping period that starts with Black Friday on Nov. 29. The two sides have been negotiating a new collective agreement for more than a year.
Canada Post workers on strike ahead of busy holiday season
The most contentious issue in the negotiations appears to be seven-day parcel delivery: Canada Post wants to immediately pivot its business to deliver parcels on both weekdays and weekends. To do that, the Crown corporation wants to hire more part-time workers because it would be less expensive than to rely on existing full-time Canada Post employees.
“We need more flexibility in our delivery model and we want to be in a position to hire people part-time to deliver parcels on weekends. This is the only way we will be able to compete with other couriers,” said Jon Hamilton, vice-president of strategic communications for Canada Post.
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Canada Post currently only delivers parcels on weekdays, except for a few key weekends around the holiday season. Mr. Hamilton said in an interview that Canada Post could not afford to pay its full-time employees double-time (a pay rate that is twice an employee’s regular rate) to deliver parcels on weekends.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is opposed to hiring part-time workers to perform weekend parcel delivery – the union says Canada Post wants to hire new workers at lower wages and offer them fewer benefits than what Canada Post employees currently have. “They are trying to create a two-tier system of compensation,” Jan Simpson, national president of CUPW, said in an interview on Friday.
Ms. Simpson said that Canada Post intends to offer new hires a defined contribution pension plan, rather than a defined benefit plan as full-time employees have. “We do not want them to gig-ify the post office. We have offered them various models to perform seven-day parcel delivery with full-time employees and they have rejected all our suggestions,” she added.
Canada Post currently only delivers parcels on weekdays, except for a few key weekends around the holiday season.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Canada Post and the union also remain very far apart on wages. The corporation has proposed a 11.5-per-cent wage increase over four years, with a 5-per-cent increase in the first year of a new collective agreement. CUPW is asking for a compounded wage increase of 24 per cent spread over four years. Mr. Hamilton told The Globe that since the strike began, neither side has moved on wages.
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CUPW ordered its members to go on a nationwide strike, shutting down almost all post offices except those that are located in other retail stores, such as Shoppers Drug Mart and Rexall. In the past, the union had conducted rotating strikes, leaving different locations across the country open on different days.
The union and Canada Post have agreed to continue delivering government cheques such as pensions, unemployment insurance and child-care benefits. All other mail will not be delivered until the strike ends.
Mr. Hamilton said the strike will likely cost Canada Post tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue, and make it harder for it to meet the union on its wage demands. Ms. Simpson said the reason the union opted for a nationwide strike instead of a rotating strike was because Canada Post had told the union it would withdraw employees’ health benefits in the event of a strike. “We cannot let any of our workers continue working without benefits,” she said.
Stephanie Ross, associate professor of labour studies at McMaster University, said that by striking, CUPW is trying to protect its workers against more “tiering” of its work force.
“We have seen this happen in many workplaces: the greater use of part-timers as a means for the corporation to cut costs. Canada Post’s position appears to be that it cannot compete unless it follows the Amazon model of hiring workers for cheap and contracting out delivery. The union is trying to prevent that race to the bottom,” she said.
Canada Post says it has lost $3-billion since 2018, because of declining letter mail and intense competition from speedier delivery service providers such as Amazon, United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. In the first half of 2024 alone, the corporation lost $490-million.
But the Crown corporation is negotiating at a time when unions have gained significant momentum at the bargaining table, negotiating higher-than-average wages for their members after a sharp increase in the cost of living. Federal government data show that between January and August this year, private- and public-sector unions negotiated an average annual wage increase of 3.7 per cent. Before the pandemic, that figure hovered around the 1.7-per-cent mark.
Prof. Ross said that Canada Post’s wage offer was low given the current climate of bargaining. “When you have a below-average wage offer, and significant structural changes that can undermine long-term job security, it might not be easy to reach a deal.”
Although the federal government ended the 2018 postal strike with back-to-work legislation, Labour Minister Steve MacKinnon told reporters in Montreal on Friday that Ottawa is not looking at any other solution to a strike other than continued negotiations between both sides.