The rotating postal strike plaguing Canada could soon be over. But it doesn’t mean the crown corporation’s troubles are over.
It’s taken two years of contentious and often acrimonious bargaining, as well as a couple of full-blown walkouts. But Canada Post and the union representing thousands of mail carriers say there is an agreement in principle.
Both sides issued statements late Friday, confirming that the outline of a deal was in place. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers said afterward that all rotating strike action has been suspended.
“The fact that our union is saying yes to this, I think Canada Post is offering something that we’re able to accept as a membership,” said Mark Lubinski, president of the Toronto local of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. “Our members are tired. We all want Canada Post to be successful. We want this contract to be over, and we want a contract that is signed, and we could go on still be able to fight for Canadians for a public postal service that is successful, where we could still fight for not having door to door delivery go away in Canada.”
As yet there are only the bones of a deal. Both sides also said there would be no comment on the details until they are hammered out.
Labor lawyer Sundeep Gokhale says that’s unusual at this point.
“Typically, a union and an organization will come to a memorandum of agreement where they’ve papered all the details of what the deal actually includes. Here what they’ve done is they’ve said ‘well conceptually we’ve agreed on the big picture issues right now. But now we’re going to put pen to paper and provided that, you know, we have an agreement, then we’ll ultimately take it to a ratification vote,’” Gokhale said.
Motivation for a deal might also come from news that the crown corporation reported a $541 million loss for the third quarter, the highest quarter loss in its history. That makes about $1 billion lost already this year.
Canada Post said ongoing labor disruption by the union is driving consumers to competitors. That will almost certainly mean another bailout from the federal government. And although the company says it has a plan, Ottawa said it needs options.
Once again, the survival of Canada Post is at stake. A bailout earlier this year was to last until March of 2026.
“They now state that they’re going to run out of the bailout that was given to them in January by the end of this year, requiring yet another bailout,” said Ian Lee of Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business. “Why that’s significant is these losses are growing. It’s not stagnant or flatlined. That is to say each quarter that goes by, the situation gets worse because letter mail, the volume of letters, continues to decline and their losses in market share in parcels continues to decline.”
The ongoing disruptions have damaged the reputation and the confidence that consumers and businesses have in Canada Post.
“Businesses have learned the hard way that Canada Post is increasingly an unreliable provider of delivery services, so many have made decisions to permanently move away,” said Dan Kelly, with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Lee said if reforms to the postal service are on the way and the union has accepted that, it could be positive news.
“They’ve historically opposed reforms to essentially change the business model from a letter model to a parcel model, which is completely different. And so we’ll see if they are going to buy into the changes necessary to save Canada Post,” Lee said.
The two sides must still agree to the language in a deal. If not, there is still a possibility of a strike before Christmas. That could, almost certainly, put the survival of Canada Post in even more jeopardy.
