More than 56,000 postal workers across the country begin voting Monday on a contract offer from Canada Post, as the Crown corporation moves ahead with a massive restructuring.
The voting by members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers runs until May 30.
With the restructuring already under way — including last week’s announcement on the start of converting home delivery to community mailboxes — it’s unclear just how much leverage the union would have if the deal is voted down, said McMaster University labour studies professor Stephanie Ross.
“This is not a good climate for a union to be bargaining in,” Ross said. “The employer is saying ‘we think we can do with fewer of you.”
The agreement is for a five-year deal, with wage increases of 6.5 per cent and three per cent in the first two years, and increasing to match inflation in the final three years.
The agreement also maintains job security provisions for mail carriers. If it gets voted down, those provisions could come under pressure, Ross suggested.
“It could provoke the employer to take a much less accommodating approach,” Ross said.
In a bulletin posted on the union’s website, two senior CUPW negotiators said the deal was as good as postal workers can get right now.
“The majority of the National Energy Board and the majority of the negotiators are absolutely convinced these tentative agreements are the best agreements we can achieve at this time,” said negotiators Lana Smidt and François Senneville, adding that without a contract, the Crown Corporation would have a free hand with layoffs.
”(Canada Post) could ‘staff to needs’ and lay members off. We would no longer have our job security protections,” the negotiators argued.
Earlier this month, CUPW national president Jan Simpson came out against the tentative agreement, which is recommended by roughly two thirds of the union’s national executive board.
In a statement Monday, Canada Post said it hoped workers would approve the deal.
“We are hopeful employees will choose to ratify the agreements,” the statement said. “They provide employees with security, while ensuring the stability needed to help us win back some business from major retailers, especially as they build their holiday peak season shipping plans in June and July.”
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.
