Ottawa – Labor experts say that another postal service is unlikely to strike, when post -Canada workers proposed their employer’s latest round in a forced vote and the parties rejected their next steps.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers said on Friday that around 55,000 members represented by the union shot the latest proposal of the Canada Post, which saw a wage increase of about 13 percent in four years and was restructured to add part -time workers to the deal.
Some 68.5 percent of the urban mail carriers who voted were against the deal, while they were 69.4 percent against rural and suburban colleagues.
Assistant Professor Adam King at the Labor Study Program at Manitoba University said that the forced recommendation vote and a “distraction” administered by the Canada Industrial Relations Board was ordered by the federal government.
He said in an interview, “Hopefully at the end of the day, we see a compromise reached the table – where it should have been in the beginning.”
“Canada Post Management is actually going to put something on the table that the Sangh really thinks members will accept.”
The conversation for a new collective agreement has been going on for more than one and a half years. The federal government asked CIRB to step into the postal strike of a holiday season at the end of last year, but the parties remain in a deadlock.
The Crown Corporation requested that Job Minister Patty Hazdu sent his most recent proposals from the end of May – called him a “final proposal” – for a forced vote from workers.
The Canada Post said in a statement on Friday that the vote was “disappointed” in the results and was weighing its next steps.
Cupw said in a bulletin last week that his negotiaters are ready to go back to the bargaining table.
A national ban on overtime work, when Cupw entered a strike position in the end of May, will continue.
King admitted that when the vote did not go in favor of the Canada Post, it was not “luxurious” rejection, in which more than 30 percent of the voter deals came out.
Larry Savage, Professor at the Department of Labor Studies at Brock University, said that a clear partition in the rank of CUPW would make it difficult to bring members to the picket line.
Savez said in an interview, “If you can effectively organize the strike, it is not clear for me that it will create results in search of the Sangh.”
Before sending the proposals of the Canada Post for one vote, Hajdu asked the parties to come on conditions to force the arbitration to end the dispute.
Cupw was roughly in favor of sending talks for mediation, but the Canada post pushed back, arguing that it would tie the conversation in a long process.
The Canada Post has warned that uncertainty around the fate of contract talks continues to cost millions of dollars in business each day as customers shift to contestants.
The financial crises of the Crown Corporation have been well documented in negotiations. The report of an Industrial Inquiry Commission at Commissioner William Coupon found earlier this year that the postal service was effectively bankrupt and required adequate reforms to remain.
But the king said that bringing the mediators into a medium ground is “orthodox” and there is no possibility of widely making types of sweeping, the structural changes are looking at the Canada Post in a new deal.
Savez agreed that “binding mediation is not actually a long -term solution to problems in the Canada Post.”
“I think the forced final vote of the management was a gambling and it was blown on his face, but he still holds the card,” he said.
The Canada Post can unilaterally implement the terms of the new contract and “dare to strike the union”, “Savez said, or start closing workers as their business.
“Both those strategies put a tremendous pressure on the Sangh to reach an agreement,” he said.
“The threat to the Canada Post is that its aggressive strategy thus thus so far differently separates parties.”
Hazdu said in a statement on Friday that the federal government hopes that the parties will get a resolution as soon as possible and “as soon as possible.
Given the financial struggles mentioned in the report, Savez said that he hoped that the federal government would see to reorganize the mandate of the Canada Post after the current labor dispute.
This may see, as the couple report suggested, another expansion of community mailboxes or the end of daily door-to-door delivery.
In that context, Savez said that the conversation is less, which side won the day and “which will live long -term.”
He said, “There is a storm for both the management of the Canada Post and the Sangh. And I think it is important to climb this hump, but I think it coordination compared to what is coming,” he said.
This report of Canadian Press was first published on August 5, 2025.
Craig Lord, Canadian Press