What the final offer from Canada Post includes, and why the union wants workers to vote no

Unionized postal workers are voting from July 21 to Aug. 1 on the final offer presented by Canada Post.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is encouraging workers to vote against it , as it calls it a forced vote that harms the “foundation of free and fair collective bargaining.” Canada Post says the offer protects what is important to workers while reflecting the company’s current reality.

Here’s what Canada Post’s final offer includes, and why CUPW is against it.

What’s in the final offer from Canada Post?

What is different from previous offers is that for urban and rural units, Canada post offered to pay a signing bonus, $1,000 to full-time regular employees and $500 to all other employees.

They also said the cost of living allowance (COLA), a benefit to employees that is paid when consumer prices increase, will have payments at a lower inflation threshold. If inflation rates exceed 7.16 per cent between Feb. 1, 2025 to Jan. 31, 2028, payments from COLA will be made.

The schedule for wage increases over the next four years remained unchanged from the May 21 offer. The first year would see a six per cent increase, the second year, three per cent, and two per cent in each of the third and fourth years. The increases will be retroactive to Feb. 1, 2024.

There were also changes to the short-term disability program, where employees will receive up to 80 per cent of their regular wages for up to 30 weeks, a benefit that before paid 70 per cent of regular wages for up to 17 weeks.

To maintain the already existing benefits for current employees, new hires after the agreement is signed will need to work for six consecutive months before being added to the defined benefit component of the pension plan, which guarantees a set income for the employee’s retirement years.

There were also adjustments to the number of personal days, where employees will have 13 multi-use personal days a year, with seven paid out days a year, and up to five personal days being carried over every year.

For urban workers the agreement also allows for dynamic routing, a new system that would update delivery routes daily based on mail volume and delivery points. Letter carriers will still receive per-piece payments for neighbourhood mail on top of the actual time value until 2030, and compulsory overtime will be removed. Dynamic routing would ultimately put an end to fixed routes created by the letter carrier route measurement system manual (LCRMS) that was built to assess and adjust equitable workloads for individual letter carrier routes. For the regions that won’t have that implemented, a load-levelling of the work should happen, aiming to make predictable and balanced routes for employees.

They also introduced a new part-time flex position, working at least 20 hours a week and helping cover for absences, as well as a new weekend parcel delivery system for urban units, and an update to the separate sort from delivery system amid union concerns, a system that divides the tasks that letter carriers used to do, sort and deliver, into two with routers sorting all that needs to be delivered while letter carriers focuses only on delivering.

Canada Post also wants to remove the wash-up time before meals for urban workers, a five-minute break workers get before meals to wash their hands to “reduce unproductive time.”

For rural workers, routes would be updated to get more work done over the week and new permanent flex employees may be scheduled for weekends to help Canada Post operate seven days a week. Load-levelling would optimize routes and work schedules, and meal and rest periods would be given “as appropriate.”

Why CUPW is against it

CUPW says Canada Post ignored the union’s positions, and they created a fact-check portal to show how the corporation’s offer is not meeting their basic demands.

When it comes to the wage increases, the union says a six-per-cent increase is not much, and would amount to only a one-per-cent increase, since workers received an adjustment of five per cent to their wage in the last COLA payment.

Regarding the weekend parcels delivery, the union claims that an unstructured work schedule would give more power to management to build routes that don’t take into consideration workload, health or safety of workers, and would eliminate the possibility of overtime for full-time workers as part-time workers would get priority.

When it comes to the new position for urban units, part-time flex, the union says the corporation would be able to assign them tasks without any union supervision, as well as eliminate overtime for full-time workers and impact the hours for part-time employees.

Regarding dynamic routing, the union is concerned that managers will be able to adjust their schedule to fit in as many deliveries as they can, which the union says can’t be sustainable for a long time. Regarding load levelling, the union says that this could give more power to management to give hours to certain workers over others compared to others on the floor.

On the separate sort from delivery system, the union is against it because the letter carriers would be overworked and face more extreme weather and it would also overwork routers inside as when they finish sorting what they were assigned, management can assign them more until their work day is over.

The union argues that removing the five minutes of wash-up time from workers before meals is a health and safety concern, as workers are dealing with many different packages throughout the day and need to clean up before eating. Full-time employees that work three hours or more get half an hour for a meal period.

CUPW said in a statement on July 18 that “the offer ignores the realities on the workfloor, fails to address key demands, and threatens hard-won protections.” The Union says that once the results are in, if the majority is against it, they will contact management and get back to bargaining and maintain the overtime ban effective since May 23, 2025. The overtime ban allows workers to say no to overtime, no matter if all deliveries were made or not. Workers are only allowed to work up to 40 hours a week.

• What to know about Justice Maria Carroccia, the judge who acquitted the Team Canada players
• Majority of Canadians see progress a decade after Truth and Reconciliation report: poll

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.