Canadian government to force union vote on Canada Post contract offer
The Canadian government has agreed to Canada Post’s request to force a union vote on is latest contract offer to break a negotiating stalemate. The post Canadian government to force union vote on Canada Post contract offer appeared first on FreightWaves.
Canada’s minister of jobs and families, Patty Hajdu, said Thursday she will put Canada Post’s latest contract offer to unionized workers, bypassing the Canadian Union of Postal Workers’ leadership in an effort to break an 18-month negotiating stalemate that has led mail carriers to refuse overtime work and slowed service.
Canada Post two weeks ago requested the Canadian government intervene to conduct a formal vote of rank-and-file union members after the CUPW rejected the corporation’s “best-and-final” offer. Canada Post’s ask suggests it wasn’t confident that union executives were fairly presenting management’s proposals to the membership.
The vote will be administered by the Canada Industrial Relations Board in the near future to give urban, suburban and rural mail carriers the chance to ratify Canada Post’s offer.
“We welcome the minister’s decision as it will provide employees with the opportunity to have a voice and vote on a new collective agreement at a critical point in our history,” the state-owned postal operator said in a statement.
Canada Post had a pre-tax loss of $611 million last year, bringing the total loss over seven years to $2.7 billion. A 32-day CUPW strike late last year significantly hurt revenues and parcel volumes still have not recovered. Canada Post’s business model has been under pressure for most of the century as people shifted to digital communications over mail and private parcel carriers entered the market.
Canada Post’s final offer includes a wage hike of 13.6% over four years, a $500 to $1,000 signing bonus, a higher cost of living allowance and operational changes based on recommendations from a government commission aimed at turning around the financial decline. The changes include pilot testing dynamic instead of static routes based on changing volumes.
The CUPW has been pushing the government to facilitate binding arbitration to resolve the labor dispute, but Canada Post has rejected the idea.
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