Postal workers picket in Sackville as rural post offices face uncertain future

Alyssa Greene says she’s worried about the future of the post offices in Sackville and Dorchester.

Greene, who is a member of the striking Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), made the comment Friday as she walked the picket line on Main Street outside the Sackville post office.

“I’m worried about making sure that there are jobs here,” she said one week after Joël Lightbound, the minister in charge of Canada Post announced he was lifting the 30-year moratorium on closing rural post offices.

“The rural moratorium was imposed in 1994 and covers close to 4,000 locations. It has not evolved in 30 years, but Canada has changed,” Lightbound said in a statement on the same day that CUPW members launched a nationwide strike in response to a number of measures that the minister said would save Canada Post $420 million per year.

Aside from closing rural post offices, those measures included ending daily mail delivery requirements and converting residences that still receive door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes.

Howard Winston, first vice president of CUPW’s Moncton Local 078, told Warktimes in a telephone interview that he doesn’t know which rural post offices could be closed.

“Minister Lightbound is now allowing Canada Post to arbitrarily deem whichever ones they want to close across the country where they feel they might not be making as much money,” he said as he was preparing for a noon-time rally and barbecue outside the Canada Post processing and distribution centre in Dieppe.

“Unfortunately, even if they had a list, they’re not really making it known, at least to us right now,” he added.

Job security

Winston says the main issue for CUPW is job security because the proposed cost-saving measures, including closing rural post offices, would lead to job losses and an increasing emphasis on part-time work.

“By 2030, they want to have 80 per cent of Canada Post employees working part-time,” he says, adding that since nobody can live on a part-time wage, workers would be forced to get other part-time jobs.

Yet he says Canada Post wants to create a system called “part-time flex.”

“So you might come in for three hours, but if they need you, you have to work eight hours, you can’t turn it down.”

That means, he says, it would be hard for a part-time worker to hold another part-time job.

“They want to get rid of the union and privatize Canada Post,” he says.

In an email statement late Friday, Canada Post’s Public Relations officer Geneviève Joly responded to Wark Times’ request for comment with the following statement:

Minister Joël Lightbound has given us 45 days to outline our plan to implement the series of measures the government presented on September 25. Until our plan is presented and reviewed by the government, we will not be providing details on any of the elements. I invite you to review our CEO Doug Ettinger’s Letter to Canadians for information.

To read Minister Joël Lightbound’s statement, click here.

For a CBC report on Friday’s Canada Post offer, click here.

For a summary of Canada Post and CUPW positions on all outstanding issues, see the Executive Summary and Recommendations in the Kaplan report of May 15, 2025.

Bruce Wark worked in broadcasting and journalism education for more than 35 years. He was at CBC Radio for nearly 20 years as senior editor of network programs such as The World at Six and World Report. He currently writes for The New Wark Times, where a version of this story first appeared on October 3, 2025.