After more than 20 months of talks, two national strikes, and an official commission, postal workers will have to wait until the end of May to find out the result of their vote on a tentative agreement with Canada Post.
Voting will run from April 20 to May 30, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers announced in a press release Monday evening.
“CUPW is a democratic organization. Members can vote either ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ We encourage all members to make their voices heard,” the union said in the release.
Canada Post didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
CUPW and the Crown corporation announced an “agreement in principle” in late November, then a tentative contract agreement shortly before Christmas, and finalized legal language on sick leave in late January.
Such a lengthy voting window is unusual, said University of Toronto labour studies professor Rafael Gomez.
“This is a big, national union, so things take time, but this is on the edge of the time period I’d consider normal,” said Gomez, director of U of T’s Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources.
And announcing the voting dates more than a month before balloting starts is even more off the beaten path, Gomez said.
“Announcing it now and it’s not taking place for another month and a bit, that’s weird,” said Gomez. “It’s not like people need extra time to process the information.”
Gomez still expects the vote to pass, but said such a lengthy window allows room for arm-twisting — in either direction.
“Generally speaking, quicker votes generate … the true preferences of the members at the time when they should be voting on something,” said Gomez. “In general, a very long voting window is not in keeping with sound industrial relations practice.”
In early February, a website urging members to vote against the tentative deal posted several criticisms of the agreement. The site says it’s run by “a group of postal workers to promote the ‘NO’ campaign,” but doesn’t identify any of the organizers by name.
Like Gomez, York University labour studies professor Steven Tufts also found the lengthy voting window a bit unusual, even for a national union that has a tradition of taking a long time to vote, region by region, and union hall by union hall.
“This might be taking that tradition to the max,” said Tufts.
Tufts suspects there’s just enough improvement from Canada Post’s offer last October to push members into voting yes, including wage increases of 6.5 per cent and three per cent in the first two years, compared to six and three per cent.
The October offer was a four-year deal with two per cent raises in each of the last two years, while the current tentative agreement is a five-year offer, with raises matching the Consumer Price Index — inflation — in each of the final three years.
Last August, CUPW members rejected the Crown corporation’s “final” offer in balloting ordered by the federal government and overseen by the Canada Industrial Relations Board.
In late September, the federal government gave the green light for a broad restructuring of Canada Post, including elimination of home delivery, increased use of community mailboxes and shuttering of some rural post offices.
Joël Lightbound, federal minister of Government Transformation, Public Services and Procurement, said the restructuring was necessary to fight an “existential crisis” faced by the financially struggling Crown corporation.
Many of the changes approved by the minister were recommended in a May report by the Industrial Inquiry Commission led by veteran mediator William Kaplan.
Within hours of Lightbound’s September announcement, CUPW launched its second national strike in a year. That strike was subsequently downgraded to a series of rotating regional strikes.
On Nov. 7, the Crown corporation gave the federal government its implementation plan for the restructuring, but said it wouldn’t make details public until the plan is finalized and approved.
The union has said the restructuring would lead to service cutbacks and job losses.
Canada Post CEO Doug Ettinger reiterated before a parliamentary committee in December that the Crown corporation is expecting 16,000 employees to retire or take voluntary departure by 2030, with another 14,000 leaving by 2035.
