As negotiations sour between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), local union officials say the Crown corporation has resorted to “upsetting” tactics in the ongoing strike, which began Nov. 15.
Canada Post confirmed this week it has been laying off striking workers, a move that Steve Cormier, vice-president with the Orillia union, says is “very unique” and brings a host of dire consequences.
“Unfortunately, they have written ‘strike’ down on people's ROEs (record of employment), even though they were laid off prior to the strike,” Cormier told Village Media.
Having ‘strike’ written on their ROE means they are not recognized by unemployment as laid off, Cormier said.
“We have a member here that received an ROE when her last day of work was Nov. 11, when it was a statutory holiday for us, so we weren't even working,” he said. “It really doesn't fall within the strike guidelines, but they still write strike … so they can't get paid.
“They're being laid off, but they're not being able to be recognized by unemployment as being laid off.”
Canada Post has used “a lot of different tactics to apply pressure” to the union, Cormier said, including removing short-term disability, benefits for the “sick and ill,” and more.
“If your child or your husband or wife (are) on your benefits plan, they've removed chemotherapy treatment, puffers for asthma patients, that kind of stuff – they've actually canceled all those benefits for everybody,” he said.
It’s a move Cormier argues takes “the humanity out of our job.”
“It's quite upsetting to me, personally, because I've had family members that have gone through those crises in life, and there's a good number of our family members that are not necessarily in a good way, and applying that pressure is a little unfair,” he said.
“We have to go back and work with people now that have basically tried to attack our dying loved ones.”
As the strike pushes on, members of the Orillia union continue to form daily picket lines outside the Peter Street Canada Post office, even as negotiations between CUPW and Canada Post remain far from resolution.
On Tuesday, federal Labour Minister Steve Mackinnon announced the federal mediator had decided to temporarily suspend negotiations between the two parties, as they “remain too far apart on critical issues for mediation to be successful at this time,” Mackinnon wrote in a social-media post on X.
On the union’s side, CUPW is demanding a 24 per cent wage increase over four years, improved sick leave, and the elimination of the “separate sort from delivery” (SSD) system, which divides sorting tasks from delivery roles.
Cormier said the current system leads to work safety risks for mail carriers, requiring thousands of extra steps per day and hours that can extend into the evening.
“They want us to work into the later hours of the day, which in Canada doesn't work. When you're trying to deliver mail at seven o'clock at night in the winter, it's pretty dark and it's not very safe – you can't see the black ice, etc,” he said.
The SSD system also requires mail carriers to cover significantly more ground at work, Cormier said, leading to further safety concerns.
“What that means is an additional 10-15,000 steps a day,” he said. “My steps for this year, I'm at 4,700,000 steps, and I've walked over 4,200 kilometres, so adding an extra 1,000 kilometres to my year would really, really hurt us.”
Regarding the union’s request for raises, Cormier said CUPW took a “sweetheart deal” during 2020 negotiations due to the pandemic, with the understanding that raises would be negotiated in 2024.
“We just took a deal, just to keep the ball rolling, keep the country moving,” he said. “The deal was, at that time, we'll deal with all these things in 2024. 2024 is here, and they're not negotiating in good faith.”
For its part, Canada Post counters that financial pressures have made these demands challenging. The Crown corporation reported a $490-million loss in the first half of 2024 and a 28 per cent drop in parcel volumes since CUPW announced its strike mandate in late October.
In response to the Crown corporation's losses, both in 2024 and recent years, Cormier questioned why Canada Post’s executives haven’t been fired.
Regarding the union’s requests, Cormier said worker safety is “one of our biggest priorities,” and also highlighted inflation that has taken place over the past several years, adding he doesn’t “know anybody that hasn’t asked for a raise after four years.”
Cormier said he understands the public’s frustration with delayed parcels, particularly as the holiday season draws near, but stressed the union’s 55,000 workers might have to get through Christmas without paycheques.
“It’s 55,000 Canadians that are out right now. We won't have a paycheque at Christmas,” he said. “We will not have a Christmas, for the vast majority of us.”
However, he said the union has ensured old age security checks and child tax benefits have been delivered around Canada.
“We don't hold people hostage. We've delivered old age security checks. We've delivered the child tax benefit checks, voluntarily. That's something that as a group, we got together to make sure that happened,” he said.
— With files from Megan Hederson
