Ottawa directs labour board to order striking Canada Post employees back to work

The federal government has directed the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to order Canada Post workers back to their jobs and to extend their existing collective agreement until May of 2025, which would see postal service restart in the final days of the peak holiday season.

Labour Minister Steve MacKinnon made the announcement on Friday, citing limited progress to reach a negotiated settlement between both sides. Mr. MacKinnon said a federal mediator appointed by the government during the strike informed him that negotiations were going in the wrong direction, leaving Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers unable to reach an agreement.

“This has been a month in which Canadians from coast to coast to coast, small businesses, as well as Canadians in remote regions and Indigenous communities have suffered greatly. As Minister of Labour, I have a responsibility to protect Canadians and the public’s interest,” he said.

The federal labour board will now determine if the Labour Minister’s assessment that Canada Post and CUPW are at an impasse is accurate. If so, they will order postal workers back to their jobs next week. Mr. MacKinnon told reporters that he hoped the CIRB will make that decision quickly so that Canada Post’s operations will resume as soon as possible.

Upon its return, Canada Post is likely to be backlogged with letter mail and packages, making it difficult for deliveries to be completed by Christmas.

CUPW national president Jan Simpson said the union was stunned at the government’s move to intervene. “This is an assault on the right to strike. We did not see this coming. We thought we were getting closer to reaching a deal,” she said.

Canada Post said in a statement that it looked forward to welcoming employees back to work and serving Canadians.

Canada Post strike updates: Ottawa directs labour board to order striking employees back to work

More than 55,000 Canada Post workers have been on a nationwide strike for almost a month now during the crucial holiday shopping period. Talks between the CUPW and Canada Post had been slow-moving since a mediator appointed by the federal government suspended negotiations more than two weeks ago.

Ms. Simpson said that the union had lowered its demands in its latest proposal to Canada Post sent on Monday, and was still waiting for a response.

The sticking points in the dispute revolve around wages and the use of part-time workers to perform weekend deliveries. The union’s most recent proposal on wages – a 19-per-cent increase over four years – was less than the 22 per cent it had demanded before the strike began. Canada Post has not budged from its proposal of an 11.5-per-cent wage increase over four years.

Beyond wages, the issues between both sides have proven impossible to resolve through negotiations.

Canada Post has lost billions of dollars over the last six years and blames rising labour costs as a share of revenue as a big contributor to its poor balance sheet. Roughly two-thirds of Canada Post’s work force, or approximately 40,000 people, are full-time employees with benefits and a defined-benefit pension plan. But the corporation’s use of part-time and temporary employees has grown since 2018, which CUPW says is a deliberate move by the postal service to restructure its work force to compete with private delivery companies that use gig workers. CUPW has vehemently opposed Canada Post’s proposals to hire more part-time workers to perform weekend parcel deliveries

Mr. MacKinnon also announced that it would establish an industrial inquiry commission headed by independent mediator and arbitrator William Kaplan to examine the business model of Canada Post and the structural issues that have prevented a resolution of the labour dispute. The commission will present its findings to the Minister of Labour by May 15 next year.

Mr. MacKinnon said he hoped the findings of the commission would provide a “path forward” to Canada Post and CUPW negotiating a new collective agreement.

The minister emphasized that he intervened in the dispute because the strike had proven too disruptive to the Canadian public, especially small businesses that he said had endured “severe economic harm” over the past month.

Business lobby groups, who had been calling for the government to intervene, welcomed the government’s announcement but cautioned that intervention might have come too late. “It appears the CIRB will have 72 hours to do its work before issuing a back-to-work order on Monday. This will be too late to salvage any of the Christmas holiday season for small businesses,” said Dan Kelly, the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses.

Labour experts have been critical of the federal government’s frequent interventions in strikes, saying that they undermine employees’ constitutional right to strike.

Prior to Friday, the federal government had intervened five times this year to resolve labour disputes at ports, railways and airlines. In each of those instances, the government utilized section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to order the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to force negotiating parties into binding arbitration.

The intervention in the postal strike is slightly different in that the government is not ordering binding arbitration but directing the CIRB to extend the terms of the present collective agreement and get postal workers back to their jobs while buying time for both sides to reach a deal.

“The net effect is the same – the board will order striking employees to go back to work,” said Michael Lynk, a labour lawyer and associate professor of law at Western University. He called the government’s use of section 107 “promiscuous” and said its frequent use undermined the legislative process.

David Doorey, professor of labour law at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, said that the degree of power that a union holds might have determined the speed of government intervention in a strike. “Governments are far more likely to intervene quickly when the union has a lot of power and the employer wants intervention.”

He speculated that Canada Post might not have wanted the government to intervene because if binding arbitration was forced, an arbitrator would have been unlikely to give Canada Post the flexibility it wants to restructure its work force.