Canada Post says workers to return Tuesday after labour board ruling

CITYnews halifax / By The Canadian Press

Operations at Canada Post will resume at 8 a.m. local time on Tuesday, Dec. 17, the company said, after the Canada Industrial Relations Board ordered a return to work.

Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon on Friday directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order the 55,000 picketing employees back to work if a deal wasn’t doable before the end of the year.

“Postal services will resume on Tuesday. The CIRB has found that Canada Post and CUPW are unlikely to reach a deal by the end of the year,” MacKinnon said. “An Industrial Inquiry Commission will also be looking into the structural issues of the conflict and will issue a report on May 15. This report will serve as a solid basis for both parties to negotiate their collective agreements.”

In the meantime, Canada Post says it has agreed with the union to implement a five per cent wage increase, retroactive to the day after the collective agreements expired.

The union did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the resumption of work.

It said on Friday that MacKinnon’s intervention was part of a troubling pattern in which the government lets employers off the hook for not bargaining in good faith with workers and their unions.

Business groups had increasingly been calling on the government to intervene as companies and individuals scrambled to find alternative modes of delivery with the holiday shopping season in full swing.

Ottawa used section 107 of the Labour Code to issue its directive Friday after using the same powers to intervene earlier this year in disputes at the country’s railways and ports, directing the board to order workers back to work and impose binding arbitration.

MacKinnon called the move a creative solution by not sending the matter directly to binding arbitration — as the government did in the earlier standoffs.

“We’re calling a timeout,” MacKinnon told reporters in Ottawa on Friday.

“Suffice to say positions appeared to have hardened and it became clear to me we were in a total impasse.”