As postal strike enters fourth week, pressure mounts for Ottawa to step in: experts

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OTTAWA — As the Canada Post strike drags into a fourth week, experts say there's growing pressure on the government to act as the business community's calls for intervention get louder.

So far Ottawa has said it won't step in, despite forcing people back to work in other recent high-profile labour disputes. But it's getting harder for it to stay on the sidelines, said Barry Eidlin, an associate professor of sociology at McGill University.

"The pressure is certainly mounting on them to bring an end to the strike,” said Eidlin.

The government recently intervened in major disputes in ports and rail by directing the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order binding arbitration.

But Eidlin said one key difference with this dispute is that while the Canada Post strike is certainly top of mind for many Canadians especially business owners, it’s not nearly as economically damaging as prolonged stoppages at ports and railways would have been.

In decades past, a Canada Post strike would have had much more widespread consequences -- particularly when most people received their pay via cheques, said Ian Lee, an associate professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business.

“In the '60s through the '90s, the post office was absolutely essential,” said Lee, who has studied Canada Post for several decades and previously worked at the Crown corporation.

Those who do rely on it, though, are “very, very dependent" on it, he said.

Canada Post and the union representing more than 55,000 striking workers appeared closer to resuming negotiations Friday as the strike entered its fourth week.

Federal mediation was put on hold last week due to the sides being too far apart. This week, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers said it sent new counter-proposals to the mediator in the hopes talks can resume. On Friday evening, the union said it received a response from Canada Post, which confirmed it had sent new proposals.

Calls for government intervention have been mounting from the business community, with groups like the Retail Council of Canada saying the strike is harming businesses more each day.

The government’s intervention in the port and rail disputes was controversial, and the unions involved in those disputes launched legal challenges in the wake of the government’s intervention.

The government may be feeling “some remorse” about its use of this tool, said Eidlin, “and so they don’t want to just make this the default pattern.”

Eidlin and others have warned that Ottawa’s use of section 107 set a dangerous precedent that undermined collective bargaining.

Another thing that differentiates this strike from the port and rail disputes is that Canada Post itself has not joined in on the calls for intervention, noted Eidlin. In the rail and port disputes, the employers were among the parties asking Ottawa to step in.

Eidlin and Lee think that’s because Canada Post doesn’t like its odds for binding arbitration.

“I think that they are assessing that it is unlikely that they will be able to get a favourable judgment in arbitration,” Eidlin said, particularly when it comes to one of the biggest sticking points in negotiations so far: weekend delivery.

Canada Post has pitched weekend delivery as a way to increase its revenue and be more competitive. It says it wants to staff the weekend shifts with a mix of new permanent part-time positions and some full-time. But the union has accused Canada Post of trying to increase its part-time labour force instead of creating good full-time jobs.

Eidlin characterizes Canada Post’s pitch for weekend delivery as an attempt to create a second, lower tier of employment, and he thinks an arbitrator would be unlikely to grant it “given the corrosive effect it would have on the workforce.”

Lee said the issue is existential for both Canada Post and the union. The Crown corporation needs to change or continue circling the drain, but the union doesn’t want to give up its hard-fought gains, he said.

“There’s no common ground. You can’t square the circle on this one,” he said.

Over the years, government intervention in major labour disputes has been relatively common, said Eidlin, usually through back-to-work legislation. This is part of why business leaders are so quick to call for it, he said.

But there’s also pressure on Canada Post and the union, he added — and it seems to be working.

“We are seeing some movement at the negotiating table, which is exactly ... how these negotiations are supposed to work,” he said.

If the two sides reached an agreement without intervention, it would set a new and healthier precedent, Eidlin said.

But Lee thinks the government could soon step in soon if the two sides don’t move closer together.

“They’ll probably cave in, because they’re a minority government and they’re way down in the polls,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 6, 2024