Canada postal workers grudgingly return to work

Ottawa (AFP) – Canadian postal workers vowed civil disobedience as they went back to work Tuesday after the government ended a strike over rising workplace injuries in the booming e-commerce sector.

Online businesses that rely on Canada Post to deliver their wares hailed the move to “salvage the holiday season” but the union representing 50,000 postal workers said “the struggle is not over.”

Canadian Union of Postal Workers president Mike Palecek called the government’s legislation that ended the action “unconstitutional” for trampling workers’ collective bargaining rights.

He vowed “a campaign of mobilizations, demonstrations and non-violent civil disobedience” would follow. Details would be announced in the coming days.

The government, meanwhile, appointed a mediator to help the two sides conclude a deal in the next 90 days. Failing that, Ottawa could impose a labor contract on them.

After more than a year of fruitless negotiations, postal workers launched five weeks of rotating strikes, creating a large backlog in deliveries and a stoppage of incoming international mail.

This was Canada’s third postal strike in two decades. In 1997 and 2011, the government also legislated an end to the disruptions.

But this time the stakes were higher, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pro-labor Liberals stuck between striking workers and retailers worried about a disastrous holiday season, ahead of a general election scheduled for next year.

Canada Post delivers two thirds of the nation’s online shopping and the last six weeks of the year are its busiest due to the holiday rush.

Workers sought relief from a massive uptick in parcel volumes owing to the growing popularity of e-commerce and blamed for a jump in workplace injuries.

Employment Minister Patty Hajdu said the government struggled morally with this “very difficult piece of legislation” but added it was the “appropriate time to move forward” with it.

“Small businesses were struggling, rural and remote communities were struggling and there really wasn’t a way forward for the two parties,” she said. “They were at a complete impasse.”