Canada Post said that it issued the lockout notice because its customers are already starting to flee the business due to the labour unrest.
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Canada Post informed the union that it would be changing the terms and conditions of employment for all union employees.
In a statement early Tuesday, Canada Post said it plans to suspend the collective agreement as of Friday.
She said the warning is a message to “get serious and come to the table or understand if there is a lockout, it’s going to affect the business side of things”.
Canada Post’s announcement that they will lock out Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) members as soon as Friday is an attack on collective bargaining, its workers and its customers. Negotiations have been ongoing since November, though on June 25, Canada Post presented the Canadian Union of Postal Workers with a final offer that it calls “fair and reasonable”, and the CUPW said is “trying to bully us”.
“Canada Post has just served notice on fifty thousand Canadian workers that it plans to drive them out onto the streets without pay in an effort to impose steep concessions on them”, said a CUPW representative in a press release.
“It allows the corporation to take measures that are necessary to respond to the changing business reality”, the company said, holding out the possibility that negotiations might still avert a stoppage.
CUPW says it has been attempting to negotiate pay equity for its female-dominated workforce of rural carriers and stave off what the union says is “the profitable Crown Corporation’s demands for massive rollbacks”. “They have no problem lying to the public and they have been untruthful about the real financial situation facing Canada Post for years”, Palecek told a news conference in Ottawa. That’s despite Canada Post’s assertion that traditional mail use is falling. “They refused to negotiate fairly with us and now they ‘re locking the doors and will try to starve us into submission”.
The federal government will stay out of a looming work stoppage at Canada Post for now, putting the onus on the corporation and its largest union to come to an agreement quickly before the mail stops being delivered.
The Canada Revenue Agency has deemed Old Age Security, Canada Pension Plan, Working Income Tax Benefit and the Canada Child Benefit cheques “essential” – even during a labour disruption.
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“In the event of a work disruption we would arrange. delivery one day of the month, ” he said Monday.
