Senate passes bill ending Canada Post’s rotating strikes.
Senate passes backto-work bill, putting end to postal strikes
OTTAWA — Mail service will resume all across the country at noon Tuesday after the Senate passed legislation ordering an end to five weeks of rotating strikes by postal workers.
Royal assent was granted late Monday shortly after senators approved Bill C-89 by a vote of 53-25. Four senators abstained.
The government had deemed passage of the bill to be urgent due to the economic impact of continued mail disruptions during the busy holiday season. It rushed the bill through the House of Commons last week.
But senators, after holding a special sitting Saturday to debate the bill, insisted on taking a little more time to reflect on the constitutionality of stripping postal workers of their right to strike.
They held another special sitting Monday and only put the bill to a vote after more than five hours of additional debate.
“I thought the extra time we took was valuable and was a demonstration of how the Senate should be reviewing government bills,” said Sen. Yuen Pau Woo, leader of the independent senators’ group.
Sen. Peter Harder, the government’s representative in the Senate, urged senators earlier Monday not to delay any further.
“I’m gratified that after two days of intense debate the Senate did what, in my view, is the right thing and passed this legislation,” he said after the vote.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers issued a statement saying it’s “exploring all options to fight the back-to-work legislation.”
“Postal workers are rightly dismayed and outraged,” said CUPW national president Mike Palecek. “This law violates our right to free collective bargaining under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Some senators — independents, Liberal independents and even some Conservatives — agreed with that assessment and voted against the bill.
But the majority either disagreed or concluded that it’s up to the courts, not senators, to rule on constitutionality.
An amendment by independent Sen. Murray Sinclair, who proposed delaying implementation of the back-to-work order for at least seven days after royal assent, was rejected.
Earlier, Labour Minister Patti Hajdu said the special mediator had concluded his work and the sides were no longer negotiating.
Negotiations have been underway for nearly a year, but the dispute escalated more recently when CUPW members launched rotating strikes Oct. 22.
Those walkouts have led to backlogs of mail and parcel deliveries at the Crown corporation’s main sorting plants in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.
Picket lines were up Monday in parts of British Columbia, including Vancouver, Richmond and Surrey, and in parts of Ontario.
Workers also walked off the job in Halifax and Dartmouth, N.S.
During debate, Harder told senators that failure to speedily pass Bill C-89 would have severe consequences for those who rely on stable mail delivery service, including the elderly, residents in rural and remote areas and, most especially, retailers who use Canada Post to deliver online purchases.
“It is the government’s strong view that if it does not act now to protect the public interest, it will have acted too late,” he said.
“Unlike other kinds of e-commerce transactions ... lost holiday sales are unlikely to be deferred to a later date,” Harder said. “They represent real and actual lost business for these companies.”
Canada Post said Monday the backlog of mail and parcels is “severe” and expected to “worsen significantly” once online orders from Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are processed.
In a statement, the post office said it is experiencing delivery delays across the country and that’s expected to continue into January.
The union wants better pay and job security, guaranteed hours for its 8,000 rural and suburban carriers, and equality for those workers with the corporation’s 42,000 urban employees.
CUPW also wants Canada Post to adopt rules it says would cut down on workplace injuries — an issue the union has said is a “crisis.”
Under new legislation, the union said postal workers will be forced to go back to work under the old collective agreement, which it said would result in at least 315 disabling injuries and thousands of hours of forced, unpaid overtime.
The previous Conservative government forced an end to a lockout of postal workers during a 2011 dispute by enacting back-to-work legislation, which was later declared by a court to be unconstitutional.
The Liberals say Bill C-89 does not impose immediate outcomes.
Whereas the 2011 bill imposed a settlement that favoured Canada Post, the current legislation would give a mediator 90 days to reach a settlement. Failing that, a settlement could be imposed through a decision from the arbitrator or by choosing from one of the final proposals by Canada Post or CUPW.