How Canada Post and the postal workers union continue to negotiate a new contract, ongoing uncertainty has forced nervous small businesses to look elsewhere to meet their delivery needs amid the busy holiday shopping season.
National Postal Carrier and Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) announced last month that they had reached “agreements in principle” this will pave the way for preliminary agreement on new collective agreements.
Since then, both sides have been renegotiating contract language that will form the basis of new agreements for urban and rural postal workers. Neither the company nor the union would say how long that might take.
“While we continue to review contract language to finalize preliminary agreements, we have no additional information to share,” a Canada Post spokesperson told Global News in an email Tuesday.
“CUPW negotiators for both negotiating teams are now carefully reviewing the contract language,” the union said in a statement, acknowledging that the latest round of negotiations, which lasted more than two years in total, “has been difficult.”
The union also stressed that industrial action was “suspended” amid negotiations, with Canada Post also agreeing not to lock out workers.
However, CUPW has previously said it retains the right to resume the strike at any time until the preliminary agreements are formally ratified by union members.
According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), small businesses are becoming nervous and some are looking to competitors to provide stability.
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“If we don't see an agreement reached soon, and if all this uncertainty doesn't end, we could see more businesses going elsewhere and not using Canada Post,” Jasmine Guenette, vice-president of national affairs at CFIB, said in an interview.
“We need to avoid a strike at all costs during the upcoming festive season.”
CFIB said last year's postal strike, which coincided with the December holidays, cost small businesses more than $1 billion. Canada Post itself says the strike resulted in a “net negative impact of $208 million” toward a loss of $841 million in 2024.
The Crown corporation says its financial woes have only worsened since then. the company has lost more than $1 billion this year.
Business was also impacted by a brief nationwide strike and then rotating strikes earlier this fall, as well as a ban on the delivery of leaflets and other non-addressed mail ahead of strikes.
Guenette said business owners have switched to private shipping companies such as UPS and FedEx, as well as Canada Post's majority-owned Purolator, despite being more expensive, noting a “trade-off” in confidence and quality amid Canada Post's financial and labor instability.
“If the corporation wishes to stabilize its operations, return to financial viability, an agreement must be reached soon so that business returns to as much normalcy as possible and businesses can trust Canada Post again,” he said.
“Since last Christmas, the level of trust in Canada Post has dropped, to say the least.”
However, he added that it is “unclear” whether small businesses will return to Canada Post once the new contracts are ratified, noting the company still needs to prove it can properly scale its operations and compete with the same private companies.
The federal government has received an action plan from Canada Post on how it intends to implement reforms Ottawa announced in September, including lowering letter delivery standards, closing some post offices and moving entirely to public mailbox services across the country.
Canada Post has already laid off some of its corporate staff at the government's direction and said it would also cut its mail delivery workforce, although the company said that would mostly be achieved through staff reductions.
The CUPW called a national strike to protest the government reforms, but was unable to get them repealed or repealed.
Until preliminary agreements are announced and ratified, Guenette said it is important to ensure Canada Post maintains a full range of business services while negotiations continue.
He added that the longer these negotiations drag on, “it will send a signal that maybe things aren't necessarily moving as quickly as they should be.”
“Obviously, we hope that negotiations between the union and the employer will go well, that sooner or later a new collective agreement will be signed and all this uncertainty will disappear,” he said.
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