Canada Post Workers Move To Rotating Strikes Allowing Mail To Move, But Delays Are Still Expected
Two weeks of full strike action by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers is partially lifting as Canada Post employees move to rotating strikes, allowing some mail to start moving while delays are still expected.
The strike began on September 25th after the Canadian government gave the greenlight to Canada Post to begin undertaking major reforms including phasing out home delivery, closing post offices, and slowing service standards.
Liz Morton
Negotiations between Canada Post and the union have been at a stalemate, forcing a complete shutdown of postal services, but CUPW has now announced they are moving to rotating strikes starting October 11th, allowing services to resume.
Today, we are announcing that starting Saturday, October 11 at 6 AM local time, CUPW will move from a nation-wide strike action to rotating strikes. Locals that will be rotating out will be informed closer to the time when they will take action.
While this will start mail and parcels moving, while continuing our struggle for good collective agreements and a strong public postal service.
We did not take the decision to move to a nation-wide strike lightly. Postal workers would much rather have new collective agreements and be delivering mail instead of taking strike action.
Yet, we could not stand by as the Government announced its plans to allow Canada Post to gut our postal service and slash thousands of our jobs. Contract after contract, this employer has sought to chip away at postal services, worker rights and good jobs, and its latest offers are an outright attack on public service. The Government’s announcement on September 25th also emboldened Canada Post to continue making a mockery of the bargaining process.
We want to thank our members for standing strong, the public for their support, as well as the New Democratic Party and Bloc Québécois for holding this government accountable. We have a follow-up meeting with Minister Lightbound’s office next week.
We will continue our fight for strong public services, good jobs, and a sustainable public post office for all Canadians.
Canada Post also issued a statement, advising that while the move to rotating strikes will get mail moving again, significant delays are still expected due to the ongoing disruptions.
Canada Post will welcome back employees represented by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) on Saturday, October 11 as the union moves from a full, national strike to rotating strikes. Plans are now underway to ensure a safe and orderly restart of our national operations, which were shut down without warning on September 25 following the union’s sudden national strike.
While postal services will begin to resume next week, uncertainty and instability in the postal service will continue with the union’s decision to conduct rotating strikes.
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 says it is expecting to take several days to clear the mail and parcels backed up in the network, so they will not be accepting new commercial shipments until October 15th
Given the duration of the national strike and with rotating strikes expected, when our operations resume we will need to begin processing the mail and parcels trapped in our network.
As we continue to operate with an unstable network, it will take time to clear the trapped volume and manage operational resources, so customers should expect delays in processing and delivery.
Some limitations will apply after our operations resume – including for pickups and drop-offs.
Because of this, new commercial volumes will not be accepted into the network until Wednesday, October 15. This means we will not pick up or accept mail or parcels at our plants or depots until this date.
In addition, on-time delivery guarantees for parcel services remain suspended and date-specific Neighbourhood Mail will not be available. We will notify you as soon as we are able to resume these services.
The statement ended with a call for CUPW to return to the bargaining table, saying "the need to align the business to the current needs of the country to reduce the dependency on taxpayer dollars grows more urgent each day this strike continues."
