Labour Issues: 1)Canada Post union to lift overtime ban, stop delivering flyers; 2)Air Canada flight attendants massively reject wage offer, union says; 3) Georgian College support staff join province-wide strike, campuses remain open; 4)Ontario home care nurses demand same pay, benefits as hospital nurses

1)Canada Post union to lift overtime ban, stop delivering flyers

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Ian Bickis, September 12, 2025

The union representing Canadian postal workers is moving to end a ban on overtime work and will instead have members stop delivering commercial flyers as it seeks to get Canada Post back to the bargaining table.

The halt to flyer deliveries is set to come into effect Monday, said Canadian Union of Postal Workers president Jan Simpson, who warned of possible escalation ahead.

“Canada Post needs to get back to the table,” she said at a press conference in Ottawa on Friday.

“If Canada Post continues to stall, postal workers will have no choice but to consider stronger actions to move negotiations ahead.”

The warning comes as CUPW says Canada Post is refusing to talk until the union significantly changes its latest offer.

The union in early August voted down what Canada Post said was its final offer, and CUPW responded with its own proposal that the postal service said was a step backwards.

Simpson said the move away from an overtime ban came as the postal service has raised concerns about its impact on operations. She said she hopes the change will help restart talks and secure a deal before the lucrative holiday rush while minimizing the impact on Canadians.

“Our goal is to get collective agreements that are ratifiable before Christmastime,” she said.

Canada Post said the latest move to halt flyer delivery was a disappointment that will affect thousands of Canadian businesses that use the service.

“This latest strike activity will only increase the uncertainty that is having a major impact on the business,” said spokesman Phil Legault in a statement.

Canada Post says the gap between the two sides remains “substantial” after the union’s latest proposal maintained or hardened its positions on many issues.

“We encourage CUPW to come back with workable solutions that reflect our current reality and get the parties closer to a resolution,” said Legault.

Business groups also expressed disappointment in the latest union move.

Canadian Federation of Independent Business president Dan Kelly said there was nothing good in the latest union action as about 20 per cent of members use Canada Post for flyers as a low-cost advertising option.

“This is bad news, but even more than the loss of flyers, this inches us closer to an overall strike or lockout, and we are very close to the critical holiday season once again.”

A strike and lockout lasted more than a month in November and December last fall, ending only after then-labour minister Steven MacKinnon declared an impasse in the talks and asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order an end to the work stoppage.

While many might not be bothered by the loss of flyers, the Retail Council of Canada said it was very concerned by the move, especially as seniors and those in rural or underserved communities still use them to learn about potential savings.

“Canadians should not be caught in the middle of this dispute,” said Kim Furlong, head of the Retail Council, in a statement.

The impasse between the union and postal service comes as workers demand higher wages and other work improvements, while the Crown corporation has posted cumulative losses of more than $5 billion since 2018.

Kelly at the CFIB said that at some point the government will need to push through major reforms to make what is still a vital service for many Canadians and businesses a sustainable operation.

“They need to rip the Band-Aid off and get the major reforms made, and order the workers back on the job until such time as that is over.”

Simpson at CUPW said she was worried the government would indeed step in again as it did before in the Canada Post dispute and in many other times including for Air Canada, port and rail strikes.

“I’ve never seen more people on picket lines in my life, and this is because this government is enabling these employers to know they don’t have to come to the table and bargain collective agreements.”

— With files from Craig Lord in Ottawa.

2) Air Canada flight attendants massively reject wage offer, union says

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Canadian Press Staff, September 6, 2025

Air Canada flight attendants have massively rejected the employer’s wage offer following a vote on a new contract that ended Saturday.

Flight attendants at Air Canada wrapped up voting at 3 p.m. ET on the tentative new contract, with 99.1 per cent voting down the airline’s wage offer.

The airline says the wage portion will now be referred to mediation as previously agreed to by both sides.

“Air Canada and CUPE contemplated this potential outcome and mutually agreed that if the tentative agreement was not ratified, the wage portion would be referred to mediation and, if no agreement was reached at that stage, to arbitration,” the airline said in a statement shortly after the results were released by the union.

“The parties also agreed that no labour disruption could be initiated, and therefore there will be no strike or lockout, and flights will continue to operate.”

“Air Canada is fully committed to the mediation and arbitration process,” the airline added.

The Air Canada component of the Canadian Union of Public Employees says most terms would still form part of a new collective agreement with the airline, with the exception of the wage issue.

The tentative deal that was voted down, which ended a strike at the airline last month, raised wages for workers and established a pay structure for time worked when aircraft are on the ground.

It included a 12 per cent salary increase this year for most junior flight attendants and an eight per cent bump for more senior members, followed by smaller raises in subsequent years.

Voting opened Aug. 27 for the 10,000-plus members of the union.

The union said 99.4 per cent of membership took part in the vote.

The three-day strike ended Aug. 19 with the help of a federal mediator after upending thousands of customers’ travel plans.

“It is impossible to ignore the corrosive role the federal government played in these negotiations,” the union said in a statement on Saturday.

“Rather than maintaining their neutrality, the federal government kept their thumb on the scale throughout the bargaining process and gave Air Canada the leverage they needed to suppress flight attendants’ wages.”

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3) Georgian College support staff join province-wide strike, campuses remain open

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Allison Jones, September 11, 2025

Support staff at Ontario’s publicly funded colleges walked off the job Thursday, striking over not just better wages and benefits, they said, but for the future of the college system.

The 10,000 full-time college support staff, including library technologists, facilities and trades workers, and staff in financial aid and registrar offices, went on strike after failing to reach a new contract deal. Classes are continuing, colleges said.

The workers’ top priority in this round of bargaining is job security, their union said.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union has said that nearly 10,000 college faculty and staff have either been laid off or are projected to lose their jobs amid hundreds of program cancellations and suspensions at colleges across Ontario since last year.

Colleges have been increasingly relying on tuition from international students for several years due to low levels of provincial government funding and a years-long tuition freeze, and have been struggling since the federal government enacted a cap on international students.

The provincial government is not a direct party to these negotiations, but the onus to better fund the college system lands squarely on Premier Doug Ford’s shoulders, said OPSEU president JP Hornick.

“It’s been in his hands, the decline of our beloved colleges that we have given years to, even decades of our lives to, and Ford’s had eight years and has done nothing more than drive the system more into the ground,” Hornick said.

A spokesperson for Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn noted that the province is not at the table.

“We are monitoring the situation closely and remain hopeful that all parties reach a fair deal that puts students first,” Bianca Giacoboni wrote in a statement.

The support staff are bargaining with the College Employer Council, which said that OPSEU’s demands of a moratorium on campus closures and layoffs is unrealistic.

“At a time when college enrollments and revenues are down by as much as 50 per cent, OPSEU continues to insist on demands that are fiscally impossible,” the council wrote in a statement.

It said colleges have offered wage increases of two per cent per year, increases to on-call and shift premiums, enhancements to severance and paid leave for domestic and sexual violence.

The College Employer Council has said the union’s demands would expose colleges to more than $900 million in additional costs, although the union disputes this figure.

A government-commissioned report found in 2023 that Ontario’s college funding per student is just 44 per cent of the level of the rest of the country.

The province earlier this year announced $750 million for science, technology, engineering and math programs at colleges and universities, on top of a previously announced $1.3-billion package for the post-secondary sector, but the institutions say more is needed.

Jay Timms, an assistive technologist in the Algonquin College Centre for Accessible Learning, said layoffs are gutting the college system.

“Support staff need support, and right now, because of budget cuts from the Ford government, we’re understaffed, and we’re still cutting positions,” Timms said on the picket line.

“There’s hundreds of my colleagues been laid off since January, whole schools cut, and we’re still having to do a high level of work. There’s still thousands of students in there, and we just can’t keep up with the work.”

— With files from Catherine Morrison in Ottawa.

4)Ontario home care nurses demand same pay, benefits as hospital nurses

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Canadian Press Staff, September 8, 2025

Hundreds of home care nurses say they want to be paid the same as their counterparts in hospitals, as bargaining on a new deal gets underway.

The Ontario Nurses’ Association says it is asking the Victorian Order of Nurses for fair pay for home care nurses, who have to deal with a wide variety of issues other nurses do not.

They say data from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board shows nurses have experienced 2,100 violent workplace incidents in homes over the last two years.

The union’s provincial president Erin Ariss says the rate of workplace violence is five times higher for those working in home care than for their counterparts in other nursing sectors.

She cites other risks nurses face on the job, such as visiting homes alone, driving lengthy distances between patients and caring for far too many patients to properly visit and treat all of them each day.

The Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Home care nurses with the organization can make upwards of $20 less per hour than hospital nurses, Arris said.

The pay disparity became readily apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, when nurses left home care in droves for better pay in hospitals.

Lorna Thompson left the hospital sector to work as a nurse in home care some three decades ago, back when pay in home care surpassed hospital work.

Those wages slid over time, she said, and salaries have not kept up with the rate of inflation over the last decade. Pay would be 14 per cent higher if it had, she said.

Thompson said nurses who work in home care have the same education and licensing requirements as hospital nurses, and are often the only people who can help if an emergency occurs in the home.

“We deserve the equal pay,” she said.

“We’re demanding it and we’re not going to settle, not this time.”

The ONA represents about 230 nurses with the Victorian Order of Nurses who work in home care across the province.