Canadian Union of Postal Workers Shifted to Rotating Strikes Starting this Past Saturday

Brockville – The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) began rotating strikes this past Saturday, October 11, across the country.

In a statement released last Thursday, CUPW said, “CUPW will move from a nation-wide strike action to rotating strikes. Locals that will be rotating out will be informed closer to the time when they will take action.”

“While this will start mail and parcels moving, while continuing our struggle for good collective agreements and a strong public postal service,” CUPW said. “We did not decide to move to a nationwide strike lightly. Postal workers would much rather have new collective agreements and be delivering mail instead of taking strike action.”

The union said they could not stand by as the Government announced its plans to allow Canada Post to gut our postal service and slash thousands of our jobs.

“Contract after contract, this employer has sought to chip away at postal services, worker rights and good jobs, and its latest offers are an outright attack on public service. The Government’s announcement on September 25th also emboldened Canada Post to continue making a mockery of the bargaining process,” commented the union.

Canada Post said in a statement released on Friday, “Canada Post will welcome back employees represented by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) on Saturday, October 11th, as the union moves from a full, national strike to rotating strikes. Plans are now underway to ensure a safe and orderly restart of our national operations, which were shut down without warning on September 25 following the union’s sudden national strike.”

They went on to say that while postal services will begin to resume this week, uncertainty and instability in the postal service will continue with the union’s decision to conduct rotating strikes.

“Shutting down and restarting parts of our integrated national network with rotating strikes has always challenged our ability to provide reliable service to customers. As a result, all service guarantees will be suspended,” said Canada Post.

Canada Post said that rotating strike activity may be isolated to specific locations, affecting those areas for a specified period of time. During a rotating strike, Canada Post will accept, process and deliver mail and parcels in unaffected areas, but you can still expect delays.

“Once an item is inducted into our network, it will be secure but cannot be retrieved if that facility is affected by a rotating strike. Items will be delivered as quickly as possible after a disruption is over and operations resume,” said Canada Post.