More than 50,000 Canada Post workers officially on strike, says union

The 55,000 Canada Post workers represented by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) are on strike as of 12:01 a.m. EST (9:01 p.m. PST), the union says.

“After a year of bargaining with little progress, postal workers made the difficult decision to strike,” the CUPW said in a news release.

“Canada Post had the opportunity to prevent this strike, but it has refused to negotiate real solutions to the issues postal workers face every day. Instead, Canada Post left us no choice when it threatened to change our working conditions and leave our members exposed to layoffs.”

“We’re asking for higher wages. Our union asked for 18 per cent in the first year to match inflation rates. Canada Post offered us 11.3 per cent over four years. We’re asking for more personal days and injury days seeing as our body is our work tool. We’re also asking for better contributions to our pensions,” said Miles Farrell, a mail carrier for Canada Post.

The CUPW issued a 72-hour strike notice earlier in the week, saying it’s been asking for fair wages, safer working conditions and other improvements over nearly a year of bargaining.

Canada Post served the union with the lockout notice not long after but had said it didn’t intend to lock workers out.

Farrell has been a letter carrier since 2020.

“I haven’t worked for Canada Post for that long but I have colleagues who’ve worked here for 20 plus years and every renegotiation they lose a bit of something. They lose either contributions to their pensions, personal days, they get meager wage increases,” she explainde.

“I’m kind of tired of hearing the narrative that Canada Post is in millions of dollars of deficits and I don’t think that that should be used to poorly impact us at the negotiation table.”

Adding, “We don’t have much to help us negotiate. Striking is our right. And it’s unfortunate for us as well. We don’t get paid. We also have families.”

The impact of a strike

The Crown corporation previously said that if there is labour action, it will do its best to minimize service disruptions, but delays may be unavoidable.

“Mail and parcels will not be processed or delivered for the duration of the national strike, and some post offices will be closed,” Canada Post said as part of a news release. “Service guarantees will be impacted for items already in the postal network. No new items will be accepted until the national disruption is over.”

It also warned that a labour disruption would make its already serious financial situation worse, as a competitive parcel delivery market has increasingly challenged Canada Post in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Shutting down facilities across the country will affect Canada Post’s entire national network,” Canada Post noted. “Processing and delivery may take some time to fully return to normal.”

Ahead of the strike deadline, federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon said he formally appointed the director general of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services as a special mediator to help in the talks.

“Our top federal mediators have been working with the parties tirelessly, and we are now sending additional resources to the bargaining table,” MacKinnon said in a post on X. “We are making sure that these two groups have everything they need to reach a deal.”

– With files from The Canadian Press