Canada Post workers will vote this spring on whether to ratify long-sought-after new contract agreements with the national mail carrier, the union said Monday.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) said in a statement that the ratification voting period will be held between April 20 and May 30.
Several meetings will be scheduled during that time to allow all members of good standing in the urban and rural bargaining units to cast a ballot.
A majority of the CUPW national executive board has recommended that members vote in favour of the tentative agreements, which were announced in December after over two years of contentious negotiations. Contract language was finalized in January.
“Only if a majority of members who vote accept the NEB’s recommendations will these tentative agreements become our next collective agreements,” CUPW’s national president Jan Simpson said.
The statement added that the union will simultaneously hold a strike vote during the ratification meetings.
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“Should one or both tentative agreements not be ratified, we need to have a strong strike mandate to maintain our leverage in further negotiations,” Simpson said.
CUPW members have been without a new contract since November 2023.
Two nationwide strikes and a series of other disruptions to mail delivery were launched by the union during negotiations to put pressure on Canada Post.
The Crown corporation, which has reported staggering financial losses due to declining revenues and competition from private parcel carriers like Amazon and UPS, struggled to meet the union’s demands for higher wages and benefits.
The federal government this month said it would loan Canada Post another $1.01 billion, after announcing a series of proposed changes to the mail carrier’s business in order to keep it afloat.
Among the changes was reducing letter delivery standards, closing non-essential post offices and moving fully from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes.
The company accepted the government’s changes and incorporated some of them into the new tentative agreements.
The new five-year contracts, if approved by union members, will raise employees’ wages by 6.5 per cent in the first year and another three per cent in the second year. The remaining three years will see annual wage increases that match the annual inflation rate as measured by the consumer price index.
Workers will get an “enhanced health benefits plan,” while rural and suburban employees will get enhanced job security provisions.
The deals also create what the company calls a “new operating model to support weekend parcel delivery,” resolving one of the major disputes between the two sides in negotiations.
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