The government of Canada on Monday will begin voting for 53,000 Canada Post employees, against the wishes of their union’s leadership, on whether to ratify the state-owned company’s final contract offer.
An affirmative result would end 19 months of bitter negotiations, which included a 32-day strike during the winter holidays, and delivery delays caused by mail carriers refusing to work overtime since late May. The strike and overtime ban have hurt Canada Post’s parcel business as shippers, especially online retailers, look for more reliable alternatives.
In June, Canada Post saw losses from operations increase to approximately $7.3 million a day – more than double the daily average losses in June 2024.
The Canada Industrial Relations Board will administer the confidential vote, which will take place online or by phone through Aug. 1, Canada Post announced. Voting is open to all employees in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers’ (CUPW) urban and rural/suburban bargaining units. If a majority of members in a bargaining unit accept the offer, it will become the new collective agreement for the unit.
The Minister of Jobs and Families in mid-June directed the vote at the request of Canada Post, which said it wasn’t confident in CUPW leadership’s accurate representation of proposals to rank-and-file workers or their alleged opposition to the latest deal. Canada Post presented its best and final offer on May 28.
The CUPW has urged members to reject the company’s proposal.
“The employer is showing us that it would rather deal with individual employees instead of facing the Union as a whole. The employer knows it is easier to divide workers when dealing with them as individuals — and that it also weakens our union. We are stronger and have the most bargaining power when we stand together with our co-workers and our union,” the CUPW said in a July 4 message to members.
Canada Post seeks a four-year contract allowing it to change delivery operations and work conditions to help it compete in the parcel market and return to financial stability as mail and parcel volumes shrink.
Since 2018, the company has recorded more than $2.8 billion in losses before tax. In 2024, it posted an operating loss of nearly $948 million.
Canada Post’s mail volumes have plummeted 70% over 20 years due to digital communications, while the number of addresses served has increased by 3.3 million. At the same time, its market share in parcels has been cut in half in a few short years. Parcel revenue declined by 20.3% in 2024 as volumes fell by 56 million pieces, or 20%, compared to 2023, according to Canada Post’s annual report.
Workers would receive a 13.6% wage increase and a $730 signing bonus, with no changes to benefits. Canada Post says it intends to create new part-time positions with predictable hours and benefits that would help it provide weekend parcel delivery and optimize delivery during the week. The CUPW opposes the idea because it says the proposal would essentially eliminate overtime for full-time mail carriers.
The carrier also wants to phase in dynamic routing, which involves regularly optimizing delivery routes based on volumes, delivery addresses and pickup requests instead of operating static routes. It also plans to give supervisors the ability to level loads for mail carriers so that work is more evenly distributed and mail gets delivered faster. The union says the proposed language doesn’t have any limits on how much or how frequently work can be reassigned.
Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.
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