Canada Post’s new offers to the union of striking postal workers remove a previously-offered signing bonus and proposes to reduce both the company’s workforce and the number of post offices that are “off limits” from closure.
The offers presented Friday are the latest bid to reach a negotiated settlement with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), which launched a national strike last week to protest changes to the Crown corporation’s mail delivery services put forward by the federal government.
“Canada Post’s new offers are within the limit of what the Corporation can afford while maintaining good jobs and benefits for employees over the long-term,” the company said in a statement.
The offers to CUPW’s urban and rural bargaining units maintain much of what was presented as Canada Post’s “best and final offers” in May, including a compounded 13 per cent wage increase over four years.
The company is also offering enhancements to benefits, pensions and vacation pay, along with a cost-of-living allowance that reflects unforeseen inflation.
However, a signing bonus of $500 to $1,000 per employee is “no longer on the table,” Canada Post said, “due to the company’s deteriorating financial situation.”
The offers also continue to propose new part-time positions to deliver parcels on weekends, which the company said would “help build a more flexible and affordable postal service.”
The union has strongly opposed that strategy throughout the negotiations that have dragged on for more than a year and saw postal workers walk off the job for over a month last winter.
The most recent offers from the union had called for full-time job protections as well as a total 19 per cent wage increase over four years. CUPW members rejected Canada Post’s May offers in a week-long vote this summer.
“We had expected that Canada Post would return to the table and make significant movement so that our members could ratify their offers,” CUPW national president Jan Simpson said in a statement. “Instead, it chose to use the government’s announcement last week to take major steps backwards.
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“We waited 45 days for offers that are worse than what we rejected in August. Canada Post must have known that there is no way we can accept these and is clearly wasting even more time. So why did they bother?”
Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu and other government officials have urged the two sides to reach a deal quickly that ends the strike, which Canada Post said Friday has further worsened its “critical financial situation” and driven customers to other couriers.
Offers reflect government changes
Canada Post was initially set to table its latest offers last Friday, but said it needed to “reassess” after the federal government announced its proposed changes to the company’s business.
Joël Lightbound, the minister who oversees Canada Post, said last week that Ottawa would lift government-imposed barriers and allow Canada Post to convert addresses that still receive door-to-door delivery to community mailbox services.
The company will also be allowed to close some once-rural post offices that have since been deemed unnecessary and relax its delivery standards.
Canada Post has accepted the government’s changes and has been given 45 days to come up with a plan to implement them.
The company said Friday its new offers propose “a fair and balanced approach to managing the size” of its urban workforce, which it said will be “smaller in size and more flexible in the future.”
It includes removing a “job security for life” provision that provides full pay to employees facing a lack of work until they decide to leave, replacing it with a “transparent workforce adjustment process” that includes payment-based “departure incentives” and seniority-based rights to maintain employment.
“Layoffs will only be used if other measures, including attrition and departure incentives, prove insufficient to achieve reduction targets,” the company said in its statement.
“With thousands of employees set to retire over the next few years, reducing the size of the workforce through attrition will always be the first choice, but it cannot be the only option through this transformation.”
In an open letter to Canadians this week, Canada Post CEO Doug Ettinger said the company is “overstaffed” but added upcoming retirements would “minimize the impact on our people.”
The letter did not mention Lightbound’s direction to Canada Post to reduce its management size and payroll as part of an overall restructuring.
The new offers also propose removing a provision in the current collective agreement that it calls “another moratorium” on closing post offices. It says the provision has left 493 offices, largely in areas that have grown to be suburban or urban, as “off limits” from closure.
“Removing this provision would provide greater flexibility to align the Corporation’s post office network with the modern needs of Canadians, particularly in these overserved communities,” Canada Post said.
“It also enables the company to better focus limited resources on protecting services in rural, remote, northern and Indigenous communities.”
Canada Post and the government have repeatedly assured that rural and Indigenous mail service will not be reduced or eliminated by the proposed business changes.
The company says it is losing $1 billion a year and is on track to lose $1.5 billion this year.
The government’s proposals align with recommendations included in a May report by the Industrial Inquiry Commission, which concluded Canada Post is “effectively insolvent” and needed urgent reforms to become financially viable.
CUPW said Friday the new offers were “insulting” and accused Canada Post of “making a mockery of the collective bargaining process.”
“Postal workers want ratifiable collective agreements,” Simpson said. “We want stability for postal workers, our families, and the public who depend on us. But Canada Post seems hell bent on making workers’ pay for the financial crisis it created and trying to turn the public against the very workers who keep this service alive.”
The union plans to thoroughly review the offers before presenting any counter-proposals.
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