Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers remain far apart at the bargaining table, jostling over differences around wages and weekend delivery of parcels.
On Friday, more than 55,000 postal workers walked off the job, shutting down mail service across the country days before Black Friday and in the lead up to the busy holiday period. The two sides have been negotiating a new collective agreement for more than a year.
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The most contentious issue between both sides appears to be seven-day parcel delivery: Canada Post wants to immediately pivot its business to deliver parcels on weekdays and weekends. In order to do that, the Crown corporation wants to hire more part-time workers because it would be less price competitive for them to rely on existing full-time Canada Post employees to do weekend delivery.
“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 told The Globe and Mail 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 Crown corporation 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, Canada Post had posted losses amounting to $490-million.
CUPW is opposed to hiring part-time workers to perform weekend parcel delivery. The union has, for years, been trying to prevent Canada Post from contracting out weekend shifts by hiring part-time employees. In a recent interview with The Globe, CUPW president Jan Simpson warned that Canada Post was trying to “gig-ify the post office” in an attempt to compete with delivery giants like Amazon that rely almost exclusively on third-party delivery couriers. Amazon uses delivery companies like Intelcom, which hire independent contractors to perform round-the-clock delivery.
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 wage 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 has opted for its members to go on a nationwide strike, shutting down almost all post offices except those that are located in other retail stores like Shoppers Drug Mart and Rexall. In the past, the union had conducted rotating strikes, leaving different locations across the country open on different days.
Labour Minister Steve MacKinnon told reporters in Montreal on Friday that the government was not looking at any other solution to a strike other than continued negotiations between both sides. The government has appointed the Director General of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services as a special mediator to support both sides in reaching a deal.
