Labour iSSUES & STRIKES: 1)Mail delivery set to resume as Canada Post workers to switch to rotating strikes; 2)Jobs minister urges striking Canada Post union to respond to latest offer; 3) Part-time college support staff in Ontario to hold strike vote next week

1) Mail delivery set to resume as Canada Post workers to switch to rotating strikes

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Sammy Hudes, October 10, 2025

Mail delivery is set to resume on a limited basis after the union representing Canada Post employees announced it would transition from a countrywide strike to rotating stoppages starting Saturday morning.

The decision, announced late Thursday night, will get mail and parcels moving again, even as the Canadian Union of Postal Workers said rotating strikes will begin at 6 a.m. local time.

Canada Post said in a statement Friday afternoon that it welcomes back employees and that plans are underway “to ensure a safe and orderly restart of our national operations.” It said postal services will begin to resume next week.

The union said local branches will be informed when it’s their turn to rotate out of service closer to that time.

“This will start mail and parcels moving, while continuing our struggle for good collective agreements and a strong public postal service,” CUPW national president Jan Simpson said in a statement.

While postal services will resume, “uncertainty and instability … will continue with the union’s decision to conduct rotating strikes,” said the mail carrier.

“Shutting down and restarting parts of our integrated national network with rotating strikes has always challenged our ability to provide reliable service to customers,” it said in a press release.

“As a result, all service guarantees will be suspended.”

The move is helpful to small businesses that rely on the postal service, but still doesn’t provide the certainty they need, said Canadian Federation of Independent Business president Dan Kelly.

“CUPW’s strategy to push more customers away from Canada Post to more reliable alternatives was bizarre,” he said in a statement.

“While it is good news to see some resumption of service, rotating strikes will mean continued uncertainty, backlogs, delayed deliveries and frustrated customers. We urge the government to bring a full end to the strike and press forward with their announced reforms as soon as possible.”

CUPW, which represents 55,000 members of the postal service, declared the countrywide strike on Sept. 25, hours after the federal government announced changes to Canada Post’s business model.

That included the eventual end of door-to-door mail delivery for nearly all Canadian households.

Other government measures include an end to a moratorium on community mailbox conversions. That authorizes the mail carrier to convert the remaining four million addresses that still receive door-to-door delivery in a move that would save nearly $400 million annually.

The government also said it would end a moratorium on closing rural post offices that has been in place since 1994, covering close to 4,000 locations. It said closing some offices in regions that are no longer rural will reduce duplication in overserved areas.

Meanwhile, non-urgent mail will be cleared to move by ground instead of air, reflecting a decline in delivery volumes. Ottawa said this would save Canada Post more than $20 million per year.

Joël Lightbound, the minister responsible for Canada Post, said he’s encouraged by CUPW’s move to rotating strikes.

“Canadians count on mail delivery, and I’m glad to hear it will be moving again while negotiations between the union and Canada Post continue,” he said in a social media post.

The union’s announcement came a day after meeting with Lightbound. CUPW voiced concerns about the government’s desired changes.

“We could not stand by as the government announced its plans to allow Canada Post to gut our postal service and slash thousands of our jobs,” Simpson said.

“Contract after contract, this employer has sought to chip away at postal services, worker rights and good jobs, and its latest offers are an outright attack on public service. The government’s announcement on Sept. 25 also emboldened Canada Post to continue making a mockery of the bargaining process.”

Simpson said the union plans to meet with Lightbound’s office again next week.

Meanwhile, Canada Post said it is waiting to hear back from the union on its latest offers from Oct. 3. It said the proposal would “treat employees fairly given the challenges we face.”

“The need to align the business to the current needs of the country, to reduce the dependency on taxpayer dollars, grows more urgent each day this strike continues,” it said.

Federal mediators remain available to help the two sides reach an agreement, said Jennifer Kozelj, a spokeswoman for Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu.

“The world of work is rapidly changing, driven by new technology, global influence, and evolving service needs,” she said in an emailed statement.

“CUPW and Canada Post have a responsibility to find common ground that protects good jobs and secures the future of Canada’s national postal service. Canadians are counting on them.”

— With files from Alessia Passafiume in Ottawa.

2)Jobs minister urges striking Canada Post union to respond to latest offer

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Craig Lord, October 8, 2025

The federal jobs minister is urging the union representing striking Canada Post workers to respond to the Crown corporation’s latest offers.

Patty Hajdu told reporters on the way into the Liberal caucus meeting Wednesday that the two parties have a responsibility to find a way through the labour impasse nearly two years into negotiations.

“They all know the process. The process is that they negotiate until they get to a deal that everybody can live with,” she said.

Hajdu did not respond directly to a question about whether the federal government would intervene to end the strike by using Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code as Ottawa did when postal workers walked off the job during last year’s holiday season.

“My expectation is that they all see the cards that are on the table and that they find a deal,” she said.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers took to the picket lines nearly two weeks ago after Ottawa announced sweeping changes to Canada Post’s mandate that would allow the struggling postal service to overhaul its operations.

CUPW has denounced the changes, which include an end to daily mail delivery and the closure of some rural post offices, as government overstep in the bargaining process.

Canada Post has welcomed the minister’s changes amid its stark financial challenges.

The employer tabled new proposals last week that kept a wage offer of a 13.56 per cent increase over four years but removed a signing bonus and introduced provisions related to expected job cuts.

The union called those offers a step back and accused Canada Post of not taking bargaining seriously.

“Our expectation is if the union is not satisfied with that offer, they should table a counter-offer,” Hajdu said Wednesday, noting federal mediators will be on hand to help the parties reach a middle ground.

“That’s how mediation works, that’s how negotiations work.”

CUPW is preparing for a meeting Wednesday evening with Hajdu’s colleague Joel Lightbound, the minister in charge of Canada Post.

The union said the meeting will be its first in-person with Lightbound and will focus on Ottawa’s mandate changes and Canada Post’s latest proposals.

CUPW is asking the minister to roll back the changes he introduced nearly two weeks ago, claiming those measures would hurt the long-term future of the postal service.

3) Part-time college support staff in Ontario to hold strike vote next week

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Maan Alhmid, October 9, 2025

The union representing about 10,000 part-time support workers at Ontario’s public colleges will hold a strike vote next week amid an ongoing strike by full-time support staff.

Noor Askandar, chair of the college part-time support bargaining team at the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, says part-time workers at the 24 colleges have been working under an expired collective agreement since January 2024.

Askandar says the part-time workers’ demands include paid sick days, cancelled shift pay for all workers and wage increases.

She accused the College Employer Council of dragging out negotiations and refusing to meet with the union.

The council says it has offered wage increases of two per cent per year, six per cent vacation pay and two paid sick days per year for permanent regular part-time employees, among other things.

It says the union’s demands include a six per cent annual wage increase, an additional two per cent in vacation pay and five paid sick days per year for all part-time employees – which “go beyond what colleges are prepared to accept in the current financial climate.”

Askandar says the pay increase offer doesn’t cover the time since the contract has expired.

“The latest employer’s proposal does not include retroactive pay for the months that the collective agreement has expired, which is effectively no wage increase at all for two years,” she says.

Askandar says the College Employer Council has refused 23 of 25 earlier mediation dates since engaging in conciliation in May, saying that their earliest availability is in December.

“The college part-time support staff bargaining team is ready to negotiate at any time, and ask that the CEC agree to earlier dates to settle a collective agreement that meets the needs of our part-time college support workers,” she said.

The council says mediation is the best way to resolve outstanding issues, and a strike is “unnecessary.”

Meanwhile, about 10,000 full-time college support staff have been on strike since Sept. 11.

OPSEU said job security remains a critical concern amid campus closures and layoffs in the college sector. It said workers currently have no protections against job elimination.