Canada Post, unions try one last time to resolve pay, pension row

Bloomberg

Mail service across Canada may stop on Monday if the government-owned postal carrier and unionized workers fail to resolve a dispute over pay and pensions.
“Progress is being made” in negotiations between workers and Canada Post, Labor Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk said in a release. Mihychuk said she encouraged the parties to continue discussions beyond tomorrow’s 12:01 a.m. deadline, when workers will be locked out, the Canadian Association of Postal Workers said in a release. This would mark the first labor dispute at the company since 2011, when the federal government passed legislation requiring employees to go back to work.
If there is a lockout, Canada Post won’t accept any new packages and parcels or mail in the system won’t be delivered until the action ends. The federal government has said “essential” benefit checks like Canada Pension Plan and disability payments will still be delivered on the 20th of the month.

Declining Volume
Canada Post, like its global peers, is struggling to adjust to eroding mail volumes as customers turn to the Internet for communicating and paying bills. Mail volumes have plunged by almost one-third since the start of 2015, the service said in May.
A tentative truce proposed by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to continue negotiations for 30 days without the threat of a work stoppage fell apart late Friday. Canada Post said it was only willing to extend its lockout notice if the union agreed to binding arbitration in the event a deal couldn’t be reached in that time. The union had rejected a request from the federal government to settle negotiations through arbitration earlier last week.
“We want to have meaningful discussions with management, but getting a guaranteed bailout from an arbitrator at the end of it isn’t the incentive they need to stop playing these games with the public,” said Mike Palecek, national president of the CUPW, in a statement.
“Our bosses at Canada Post could just sit there for 30 days, refuse to discuss our proposals, as they have been doing for months, and then wait things out in the legal system for years,” he said.

Ending Door-to-Door
The postal service said that its proposal would help eliminate uncertainty for both its employees and customers. “What Canada Post has put forward is a reasonable approach that will end the uncertainty immediately and allow for meaningful discussions at the bargaining tables,” the company said in a statement Friday.
CUPW, which represents about 50,000 postal workers, is demanding a fair hourly wage for rural, mostly female mail carriers and opposes proposed pension changes. Canada Post has said the union’s demands aren’t affordable and would add nearly C$1 billion in costs.
Canada Post “claims that they want to negotiate but they refuse to move on our key issues,” the union said
Saturday.
Canada Post announced plans to gradually stop door-to-door delivery three years ago and replace it with community mailboxes, sparking opposition from citizens and politicians such as Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre. After his election win in October, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed a panel to review Canada Post’s business lines.
Pretax profit from postal operations almost doubled to C$44 million ($34.1 million) in the first quarter due to increases in the parcels business, Canada Post said May 27.