Rotating Canada Post strikes rolled into Guelph on Monday as workers walked off the job at midnight and blocked off the entrance to the postal service’s distribution centre on Woodlawn Road.
The strike was expected to last for 24 hours, but workers on the picket line said they did not know when they’d be heading back to work.
There was no mail delivery in Guelph on Monday, along with several other small communities in the area that the distribution centre also services.
Spokesperson Linda Gagne said it’ll also take a few days to get rid of the backlog.
“Because Kitchener and Hamilton were out previously [for] two days, that also impacts us and now with us being out, it will definitely impact the whole community,” she said.
Guelph joins the last batch of Canada Post’s Ontario operations that have been affected by job actions that also includes Toronto’s east end, London, Barrie, Brantford, Fort Erie, Simcoe, St. Catherines and Welland.
Canada Post said workers in Kitchener and Waterloo walked off the job on Friday, but that job action has since ended.
Gagne said the main issue comes to the health and safety of workers.
“A lot of the letter carriers are walking over 20 kilometres with 35 pounds of mail on their backs,” she said.
“More work, more parcels [and] forced overtime.”
The Crown corporation said in a statement Sunday night that the rotating strikes have impacted operations in more than 70 communities across the country causing backlogs that could delay mail delivery to its customers for several days.
The union and the postal service have been unable to reach new collective agreements for two bargaining units after 10 months of negotiations.
Last week, Labour Minister Patty Hajdu appointed Morton Mitchnick, a former chairman of the Ontario Labour Relations Board, to help the two parties resolve their differences.
— With files from The Canadian Press
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