Canada Post on Friday said it won’t provide service guarantees during a rotating regional strike, and said it will need to “adjust operations,” which sources say could mean layoffs or slashing postal workers’ hours.
“Shutting down and restarting parts of our integrated national network with rotating strikes has always challenged our ability to provide reliable service to customers. As a result, all service guarantees will be suspended,” Canada Post said in a written statement. “The impact on the company’s already dire financial position is significant and mounting. With continued uncertainty and the expiry of collective agreements, Canada Post will be required to adjust operations to its current business realities moving forward.”
Late Thursday evening, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers said the union’s 53,000 members would end their national strike at 6 a.m. Saturday, and replace it with a rotating regional strike.
“This will start mail and parcels moving, while continuing our struggle for good collective agreements and a strong public postal service,” CUPW national president Jan Simpson said in a memo posted on CUPW’s website.
Labour experts say the union was under pressure from members who were struggling to make ends meet with strike pay for the second time in under a year.
“The union has to consider a number of things on a strike. One is the pressure they’re putting on the employer. The other is the pressure the members are under … They’re not being paid,” said McMaster University labour studies professor Stephanie Ross.
Ending the national strike is a clear sign that CUPW is on the back foot, argued Brock University labour studies professor Larry Savage.
“Downgrading to rotating strikes underscores that the union is on the defensive,” said Savage. “It’s becoming increasingly evident that CUPW no longer has the strategic capacity needed to sustain an effective national strike.”
But having workers back on the job could be an attempt by CUPW to have Canada Post look like the bad guys by locking its employees out, suggested York University labour studies professor Steven Tufts.
“If they’re doing rotating strikes and interrupting service and Canada Post says ‘this is not workable, we’re going to lock everybody out,’ that makes it more palatable for the government to legislate them back to work and they can get to arbitration,” said Tufts.
The union has been asking for binding arbitration for months, but the Crown corporation has resisted. CUPW should be careful what they wish for, Tufts said. An arbitrator has ample leverage to impose a harsher deal than the union would want, thanks to the government’s green light for restructuring Canada Post, and a report from veteran mediator William Kaplan released in May.
“Arbitration is a much bigger gamble than it was three weeks ago,” Tufts said.
Lucy Pereira, 44, an Etobicoke letter carrier with eight years at Canada Post, said she has mixed emotions about the announcement of a rotating strike. While she’s relieved her paycheques will continue, she is worried that scaling back from a full strike will dilute its impact.
“It’s confusing because we’ve been on a rotating strike before (in 2011 and 2018). We didn’t get any good reaction from Canada Post,” said Pereira.
She added that she believes a full strike would have had a greater impact, but was disappointed the walkout hadn’t moved the needle in negotiations with Canada Post, which she blamed on government intervention.
Pereira said she believes it was the pressure from postal workers struggling financially that forced the union to take this step.
As a single mother, she had to delay her rent payment last November due to the month-long strike. This time, following a call for temporary work posted on Facebook, Pereira has garnered significant support and maintained her income through housecleaning assignments every day.
A Vancouver Island mail carrier who disagreed with the union’s decision to call a national strike from the outset told the Star he is glad to see the union shift to a rotating strike and stop hurting “the business we need to be successful to have jobs.”
“It’s better than doing nothing. But I think this could have been done from the get-go,” he said. “Every time we hurt Canada Post, we are hurting ourselves.”
The mail carrier said he doesn’t think the union is “in a position to dig our heels in and make demands,” and hopes the rotating strike will give the union more say in how the corporation’s cutbacks unfold so it can accept the next offer.
With few details yet shared by the union with workers, the Vancouver Island carrier said he suspects the plan will resemble Canada Post’s rotating strike in 2018, when local postal workers were assigned one day a week to picket, depending on their region, and work the rest of the time.
“It’s still a cause of disruption, but not as big of one,” he said.
