Canada Post has put forward a new offer to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), and CUPW Local 790 President Bruce Northcott says the union is reviewing the offer as we speak.
Northcott says the union never wanted another labour disruption, while expressing his surprise that the corporation took so long to make a new offer.
“We have been in this position for five months, and they’ve not tried to negotiate anything and walked away three times. It’s surprising that they’ve decided to wait this long to make any moves, but I hope that the offer they’ve given us is good because no one in our group wants to have a labour disruption.”
Issues delaying progress in barganing have changed since talks began, with Northcott saying the new offer includes proposals that weren’t always on the table.
“What was holding up bargaining was different than what they released today, which includes a bunch of offers that were never proposed until now. So how they suddenly came with such a change in pace this late into the game makes you think they were ready to do this all along. I don’t know why they persisted.”
Northcott has concerns about the proposed pay scale for part time employees, which he says suggests they [Canada Post] would continue to use the existing starting wage of $21 an hour.
“That’s definitely something we’re concerned about, and this offer doesn’t seem to address that.”
Although CUPW issued a 72-hour strike notice on Monday, Northcott says members didn’t intend to go on full strike, but rather keep pressure on the corporation.
“We came out of a timeout, and I don’t know that any union has ever been put in a timeout before, but we felt that coming out of the timeout, we needed some sort of response, but that didn’t mean that we were going to actually go on a full strike.”
“We’ve seen other unions work to rule or refuse overtime nationwide, which in my view, would have been more what we would have gone for.”
He also clarified that Canada Post’s notice of the potential strike action on Friday was incorrect.
“The corporation just came right out with it and said that we were going to strike on Friday, which we did not say. They went straight to the far end. And I don’t even know why they went with that, because I never had the feeling myself that we were targeting a full labour disruption.”
While he couldn’t reveal exactly what job action might look like, Northcott warned that the public should expect “big changes” as the dispute continues to unfold.
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