Canadian Postal Workers Strike Again

Canadian postal workers are back on strike—again—as they fight to save a vital public service.

Joël Lightbound, the cabinet minister responsible for Canada Post, on September 25 announced drastic changes to the postal service, including an end to home delivery. The 4 million remaining home delivery addresses would move to community mailboxes.

The government would also drop a requirement to deliver mail five days a week, and lift a moratorium on closing rural post offices. The changes could cost more than 10,000 Canada Post jobs, postal workers say.

It was “a really depressing day,” said Nova Scotia letter carrier Basia Sokal. She and her partner, also a postal worker, decided to go to a winery after work. After a 20-minute drive through an area with poor cell service, Sokal checked her phone and saw that she had 67 missed messages. The Atlantic Region of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers was out on strike.

Walking out made an important statement, Sokal said. “By staying on the job and continuing to wait for these demoralizing offers, we show that we accept this, we’re not going to fight,” she said. “So we decided we’re going out.”

After the Atlantic Region went out, other locals started taking up the question. Within hours, the union called a nationwide strike.

They stayed out for about two weeks. Then CUPW switched to rotating strikes, with only a local or two out at a time.

“Our decision to move to rotating strikes… reflects our commitment to the public, charities, businesses, and our members,” the union said in a statement. “Rotating strikes may slightly delay the mail and parcels, but they keep them moving. They also reduce hardship on postal workers, while maintaining pressure on Canada Post and the government to get back to bargaining.”

DEJA VU

But Skadi Green, a letter carrier in CUPW Local 846 in Vancouver, said she wished the national union would act more boldly and be more responsive to the membership. In her opinion, the union should have defied the government order that ended its strike last year, like some members wanted.

“The fact that we were on full strike twice in less than a year, and we keep walking back with no concessions from the employer, should speak volumes,” Green said.

CUPW previously struck in November 2024, demanding pay increases to make up for inflation, and to stop rollbacks to benefits and working conditions. After five weeks, the Canadian government intervened, using Section 107 of the Canadian Labour Code to end the strike and send posties back to work right before the holidays, still without a contract.

Green said that with the government poised to intervene, the corporation doesn’t need to bargain in good faith. “They can just dig in their heels and the government will save them every single time.”

Section 107 has been used eight times since 2024 to stop workers from striking. Most recently, the government invoked it against 10,000 flight attendants who went out on strike in August. The flight attendants defied the order—which their union president ripped up at a press conference—and won a tentative agreement days later. Then that offer was rejected overwhelmingly by the flight attendants, who believe they can get a better wage deal in arbitration.

A FORCED CONTRACT VOTE

Unlike the other recent Section 107 orders, the CUPW contract negotiations weren’t sent to binding arbitration. Instead, the Canada Industrial Relations Board told the postal workers to resume work under their existing contract until May 22, though it also ordered that a 5 percent raise be implemented immediately.

The government also called for an “Industrial Inquiry Commission” under Section 108 of the Labour Code to look into the stalled talks between Canada Post and CUPW.

CUPW challenged the Section 107 order at the CIRB and filed for judicial review in federal court. The CIRB decided against the union over the summer, but the court has not yet ruled.

Though negotiations were supposed to continue parallel to the commission, progress wasn’t made at the table during the cooling-off period. And when the commission’s report was released on May 15, workers felt it largely just adopted Canada Post’s positions, including recommending ending home delivery and allowing rural post offices to close.

James Ball, president of CUPW Local 730 in Edmonton, Alberta, said the report didn’t take into account thousands of emails the public sent in during the short period of time they were able. The email address frequently didn’t work because it was overloaded with responses, according to Ball.

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Canada Post is “trying to get the government to do their dirty work,” Ball said.

When the cooling-off period ended on May 23, the union called for a national overtime ban rather than walk off the job again. Engaging in the overtime ban as a strike activity allowed the union to keep the mandate from its October 2024 strike vote alive and apply pressure on Canada Post, since the corporation relies on overtime to run, according to Sokal.

Not outright striking over the summer was also partly a strategic consideration, she said, since mail volumes tend to be lower and a strike might not cause as much disruption or get as much attention.

Shortly after, Canada Post returned to the table with its “best and final” offers for the union’s two bargaining units, and the government obliged Canada Post’s request to compel a vote by the members. Sokal said that postal workers faced a “very aggressive” vote yes campaign from their bosses.

“The supervisors, before you would get to your desk in the morning, they would have already put on your desk a leaflet with: here’s the offer, have you voted, why haven’t you voted, don’t listen to your union,” Sokal said. “Just unbelievable propaganda and tactics.”

But it didn’t work. On August 1, the union announced that the Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers and Urban Operations units had rejected the offers by 69.4 percent and 68.5 percent respectively.

SLO-MO STRIKE: NO ADS

As Canada Post continued to stonewall, CUPW announced in September that its members would stop delivering flyers and neighborhood mail, which are unaddressed ads that are delivered to every door or box and provide significant revenue for the corporation. They also happen to be a heavy load for the postal workers who have to carry them.

Sokal said the flyer ban made her supervisor panic. “She was like, ‘Have you ever heard of this?’” Sokal said. “It was very funny and very effective. There were cheers everywhere. People were like, ‘Yes! I hate flyers!’ We get paid for our flyers per piece and people still didn’t care.”

To postal workers, it seemed like Canada Post was finally feeling the pressure. Just days after the flyer ban started, the corporation said it would respond the following week to the union’s latest offers, which had been presented more than a month prior.

But the government intervened once again—with Lightfoot’s announcement of dramatic cuts, including ending home delivery.

DELIVERING COMMUNITY POWER

Much like the U.S. Postal Service, Canada Post has a mandate to deliver to all postal codes and can’t leave certain Canadians behind simply because it isn’t profitable, as private companies do. CUPW members said they understand how important this service is for the public, particularly for older people and those with disabilities.

“I still am always amazed that, as a public service, delivering to parts of the country that the profitable couriers won’t deliver to because it costs more money, we’re still expected to be profitable,” said Tracey Langille, president of CUPW Local 548 in Hamilton, Ontario.

CUPW has long proposed and fought for expanding postal services to help the community by offering things like elder check-ins and high-speed internet. The union has also pushed for postal banking, an initiative that would help underserved communities and generate more revenue. These initiatives are described on the website deliveringcommunitypower.ca.

Langille’s local has been leafleting the public about postal banking, a service Canada Post offered for over a hundred years before it was shut down in 1969, similar to the USPS.

Many postal workers also point out the apparent conflicts of interest involved with one of their competitors, Purolator, which Canada Post owns a 91 percent stake in; Canada Post’s CEO Doug Ettinger also sits on its board. Purolator’s parcel business has exploded in volume over the past year, the workers noted on a flyer used for pickets there.

After two strikes in one year, Canadian postal workers are feeling the pinch financially, but also recognize the existential threats that Canada Post’s proposals and the government’s interventions pose, both to their livelihoods and to the public who rely on their services.

“Do I see us winning? I really f-ing hope so,” Sokal said.