Canada Post workers rejected ‘final’ contract offers. What happens next?

Labour experts say another postal service strike is unlikely after unionized CanadaPost workers rejected their employer’s latest round of offers in a forced vote and the parties mull their next steps. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers said Friday that the roughly 55,000 members represented by the union shot down the Canada Post’s latest proposal, which would’ve seen wage hikes of about 13 per cent over four years and restructuring to add part-time workers to the deal. Some 68.5 per cent of urban mail carriers who voted were against the deal, while their rural and suburban colleagues were 69.4 per cent against.

Adam King, assistant professor in the labour studies program at the University of Manitoba, said the forced ratification vote ordered by the federal government and administered by the Canada Industrial Relations Board was a “distraction.” “Hopefully, at the end of the day, we see an agreement reached at the table — where it should have been in the beginning,” he said in an interview. “Canada Post management is really going to have to put something on the table that the union actually thinks members will accept.” Negotiations for a new collective agreement have been ongoing for more than a year and a half. The federal government asked CIRB to step in and scuttle a holiday season postal strike late last year, but the parties remain at an impasse. The Crown corporation requested Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu send its most recent proposals from late May — calling them the “final offers” — to a forced vote from workers.