Name: Canada Post and postal workers union reach tentative agreement
Uploaded: 2025-12-22T23:56:43.756Z
Duration: 3 min 13 s
Description: The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has announced that it has reached an agreement with Canada Post, preventing strikes. The union recommended that members accept the deals during ratification votes set to be held in early 2026.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has announced that it has reached an agreement with Canada Post, preventing strikes. The union recommended that members accept the deals during ratification votes set to be held in early 2026.

Ottawa

Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers have reached a tentative five-year agreement that could end more than two years of labour disputes. The proposed deal covers both urban and rural/suburban mail carriers, offering wage increases, improved benefits, and enhanced job security.

Key provisions include a 6.5% wage increase in the first year, cost-of-living adjustments, and protection for corporate retail counters. Ratification votes are expected early in the new year, with the final agreement language anticipated by mid-January. The agreement follows a period of strikes and job actions, and comes as Canada Post seeks to implement cost-saving measures amid ongoing financial challenges.

Canada Post and postal workers union reach tentative agreement

We are tracking breaking news in the Canada post-labour dispute. The Crown Corporation and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers say they have reached a tentative agreement. Ratification votes are set to take place early in the new year, potentially bringing an end to more than two years of conflict. Mark Carcassol joins me now in studio with more of the details. What do we know of this tentative agreement? Well, there are a lot of details that are out now, Aarthi, and this has come from both the corporation itself and the union representing its workers, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, representing two specific units of its union, the urban mail carriers. And you'll see the term RSMC a lot, that's the rural and suburban mail carriers. So let's get right into what is in that agreement. It is a five-year agreement that is scheduled to expire on January 31st of 2029. As far as wage increases go, workers will be getting, if they accept the deal, 6.5% in year one, that includes 5% already received, a 3% raise in year two, increases in years three, four, and five of the contract would match the annual inflation rate of the consumer price index. There are no changes to employees' defined benefit pension plan. There are improvements to the employees' health benefits plan, income replacement for injury on duty leave, and short-term disability program, according to the corporation. Six non-carryover personal days that are locked in, giving them a total of 13 now. A new operating model to support weekend parcel delivery, which you'll remember if you've been following these talks, was a huge sticking point between the two sides. Maintaining the current job security provisions for urban employees, enhancing job security for rural employees, protecting 393 corporate retail counters as well. Those are those counters you see in your local drugstore. I have one in my area in the back of the card store. 393 of those will be protected by the new collective agreement. As Aarti mentioned, CUPW is now working on setting up ratification votes for early in the new year. They're still working out the exact language that will be in the collective agreement. They expect to have that sorted out by January 16th or so. But this is, I'm sure, a welcome relief to many people involved in this. As Aarti mentioned, this is two years of fighting back and forth. You'll remember around this time last year, Canada Post workers went on a national strike that really had an impact on holiday deliveries. After that, there was an overtime ban. There were rotating strikes. Canada Post has really taken a lot of action here, but they suspended all job action in November when an agreement was reached in principle between the two sides. Also, there are impending changes to the service. You'll remember that the government ordered Canada Post to find new ways to operate, to scale down the amount of money that it eats up. Things like clearing out or closing down some of the 4,000 rural mail outlets that it runs, moving a lot of home delivery mailboxes into community mailboxes, things that the government feels will save the corporation hundreds of millions of dollars in an era where it seems to be losing money every year due to the changing times and the fact that it wasn't and still isn't until this agreement is ratified doing weekend delivery. So we'll see what happens when the ratification vote happens. It sounds like sometime in February, but that's where things stand right now. Thank you for this, Mark. That is the CBC's Mark Carcassol.

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