Postal workers reject ‘final offer’ in forced vote [video]

Postal workers have rejected a “final offer” from Canada Post in a vote ordered by the federal government. 

Roughly 69 per cent of bargaining units — the Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers Unit and the Urban Unit — voted to reject the offer, according to figures released late Friday by the Canada Industrial Relations Board.

Voting took place over 11 days, the latest in a dispute that saw workers ordered back to work during last winter’s postal strike. 

The union called for management to return to the bargaining table and urged the government not to interfere. “If the Government truly respects unions and collective bargaining, it will keep out,” the Canadian Union of Postal Workers said in a statement. “No more back to work orders. No more forced votes.”

Canada Post said in a statement that the result “does not lessen the urgent need to modernize and protect this vital national service. However, it does mean the uncertainty that has been significantly impacting our business – and the many Canadians and Canadian businesses who depend on Canada Post – will continue. We are evaluating our next steps.”

CUPW, which represents over 50,000 employees in both urban and rural sectors, had urged its membership to reject the company’s offer, citing insufficient wage increases and attacks on seniority rights within the union, among other issues. 

“This contract that we’re voting for right now is basically written by Canada Post,” said Line Doucet, president of CUPW’s Moncton local earlier this week. 

She said the contract would “gigify” employees, with a shift towards part-time weekend work and an arrangement called “part-time flex,” which would guarantee only three hours of work per day, five days a week, while still requiring eight-hour days on-demand when required by management.

“So you could have no personal life or no life balance,” she said, referring to the potentially unpredictable nature of the work week. 

Doucet said that Canada Post previously launched a program in Montreal and Toronto which had full-time postal workers performing service on weekends instead of part-time employees, but this program was halted by the company. “We’re saying that the workforce at Canada Post needs to be more full-time and less part-time,” she said. 

Members of CUPW are currently engaged in a limited form of strike action by refusing overtime. On Friday, the union said that overtime ban would remain in effect after members rejected the offer. 

The federal government ended a full-fledged strike in December by issuing a back-to-work order. Doucet said that Canada Post isn’t negotiating in good faith, saying it has an “ace of spades in the back pocket.”  

“The government’s always gonna take you out of trouble every time that you don’t want to negotiate in good faith,” she said. “That’s why we’re asking the government to stop interfering in the negotiation and make sure that Canada Post shows up at the table and negotiates.” 

CUPW national president Jan Simpson previously urged employees to reject the offer. “By saying yes, we tell [Canada Post] that it’s acceptable to ignore free and fair collective bargaining, dismiss our Union’s democratic processes and structures, and send a message to governments that it’s okay to trample over your rights as a worker,” Simpson said in a statement in July. “To this, we must firmly and unequivocally say NO.”

Stephen Law, an economics professor at Mount Allison University, called for the government to act fairly during negotiations. “There’s a bit of a paradoxical moment here,” he said in an interview. “If Canada Post is so important that their employees are not going to be allowed to go on strike, then [the postal service] is really important and deserves the support of the government.” 

He said the COVID-19 pandemic showed the key role of Canada Post, and that it should have served as a wake-up call for the government to value the service which it deemed essential. 

“Periodically, governments feel a need to make sure that Canada Post breaks even or turns some kind of a profit,” he said. “And neither of those are necessarily great objectives for a publicly-run national communication system.”

He also stressed the importance of “route ownership” for workers, something that Doucet said was at risk in the current offer. “I think the union feels that route ownership — where people are connected to the route that they work on and come to understand that route and its nature — to remove that is to disconnect, is to alienate workers even more from their work,” he said.

The NB Media Co-op asked people outside the local post office in Sackville what they thought about the current dispute. Most said they didn’t know enough about the situation to comment. One area resident, Dave Hornidge, said he seldom uses the postal service but expressed solidarity with the workers, saying he hopes they aren’t subject to another back-to-work order.

Canada Post has a universal service obligation, meaning that it must provide services throughout the country, including vast rural areas. It also has a monopoly on letter mail delivery across Canada under the Canada Post Corporation Act. But letter mail volumes have been on a long-term decline, and the company loses out on other business due to cheaper private alternatives.

The Crown corporation is facing an existential crisis, according to the Kaplan report issued in May by the Industrial Inquiry Commission, which stated that it is now delivering fewer letters to more addresses. In 2006, Canada Post delivered 5.5 billion letters annually, compared to 2.2 billion in 2023.

The postal service does not have a monopoly over parcel delivery and faces immense competition from private companies like Amazon, having lost out on market share over the past six years. In 2019, Canada Post had a 62 per cent share of all parcels delivered compared to 29 per cent in 2023.

The Crown corporation operates on revenues from its products and services, not taxpayer dollars. But earlier this year, the feds announced that it would receive a $1 billion repayable loan to avoid insolvency amid mounting losses.

This report was updated on Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025, at 11:50 a.m.

Jaya Condran is a student at Mount Allison University, co-editor-in-chief of The Argosy, and a volunteer reporter for the NB Media Co-op. David Gordon Koch is a staff reporter at the NB Media Co-op. 

This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS).