The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is now set to strike if a deal can’t be reached with Canada Post.
The strike would start this Thursday at 11:59 p.m. EST.
CUPW has made a final offer to Canada Post after rejecting their latest offering.
Negotiations have been ongoing for the past seven months.
Gregg Anderson, vice-president for CUPW local 746, said that though notice has been given, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be going on strike.
“We gave them an offer, a final offer, along with the 72-hour notice, so hopefully they come back and decide to start negotiating with us
because they haven’t up to this point,” Anderson said.
“We give them an offer and they give us their initial offer basically every time.”
Anderson said that hopefully Canada Post would feel the urgency and avoid a strike.
“Nobody wants it (a strike),” he said.
Anderson said that one new development is the employee’s contracts are now null and void; something Canada Post has the right to do.
“We were working without a contract but the old one was still in place. Now we don’t even have that,” he added, saying that that takes away their benefits, sick leave and holiday.
John Caines, spokesperson for Canada Post, said negotiations would continue.
“We’ve been to the last minute with these folks before, it’s not an issue,” Caines said. “We’ll just continue to negotiate and hopefully we’ll get a deal. That’s what we’re going to do.”
Caines said that the recent offer by CUPW doesn’t meet the challenges that Canada Post is faced with today.
“We have some more talking to do,” he said. “We’ll sit down with the union, we have a mediator to help us through this as well and we’re going to continue until we get a deal here.”
He said Canada Post is still optimistic that they will get a deal done.
“The union president stated today in a news conference, he said he has to be positive and optimistic and so do we,” he added.
“We’re going to do all we can to get this deal done. We just have to move forward and hopefully this thing will bear fruit for us.”
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