Canada Post Back in Action, but Court Challenge Ahead

Members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) resumed normal operations on Tuesday after being legislated back to work by Parliament, but the union says it is preparing to challenge that legislation in the courts.

A well-placed source with the union says CUPW has decided to challenge the back-to-work legislation on principle but is still working out the specifics of the legal challenge.

CUPW rejected Canada Post’s final offer, describing it as unfair to newer employees because of rollbacks in pensions, wages and other benefits.

“From the beginning they made demands for rollbacks that no union could agree to,” Denis Lemelin, national president and chief negotiator of CUPW, wrote recently.

The back-to-work legislation forced 48,000 members of CUPW to return to work with legislated wage increases below Canada Post’s final wage offer.

After a 13-day strike, workers are now wrestling with a backlog of deliveries. CUPW wants to get expired flyers out of the deliveries but the Crown corporation says it is too difficult to sift them out. Canada Post says there are normally 20 million pieces of mail delivered daily, and a huge backlog exists because of the strike.

The union said in a press release Tuesday that it wanted to work overtime to get caught up, but Canada Post would not allow it.

“The Harper government claimed it had to legislate us back to work because getting the mail moving is vital for the economy. What is the Minister of Labour going to do about Canada Post putting policies in place that delay large volumes of mail?” said Lemelin in the release.

A Canada Post representative told the media the Crown corporation is hesitant to initiate overtime because of major losses incurred from the strike. Instead, Canada Post wants to wait and see if overtime is necessary.