With both sides far from agreement on the latest round of talks, it is looking more and more likely that there may be a disruption to the postal service as early as July 2nd so you may want to rethink some of those online orders from outside of Canada or retailers who can be slow to ship packages within Canada.
Major customers were sent a notice of the possibility some time ago, so both sides have been ready for the possibility with Manitoba even making alternative arrangements to get essential and government mail (like welfare cheques, health cards and more) delivered to pickup points starting on Monday.
Agreements have been reached between the two side ahead of previous potential work stoppages to deliver government payments to seniors and people with low incomes but so far, this is not the case this time although they have said they will start segregating any live animals and other perishable packages ahead of the potential work stoppage to ensure they are delivered.
While the talks are mainly confidential, it seems that guaranteed pensions and the future of Canada Post are the major issues. Unlike some previous potential disruptions, this one will impact both urban and rural customers.
Unconfirmed rumours include Purolator asking their employees to not take holidays starting on July 2nd and some Canada Post facilities not accepting mail even earlier than this to ensure all mail is delivered and not stuck in warehouses. According to letters sent to businesses
- Regular letter mail should be delivered to Canada Post before June 23 but there are no service guarantees – so if you are a coupon trader, get those sent out ASAP
- Regular parcels should be accepted at a postal office already for national service, by June 22 for delivery within province and June 27 for local service.
- Xpresspost and Priority parcels have until June 28 or 29 to be picked up or dropped off to Canada Post.
- Any letters or parcels within the system during a potential work stoppage will be secured and delivered as soon as possible once work resumes.
Appreciate the notice about the developments. I’m on direct deposit for tax credits so as long as the money comes in, I can wait for the statements.
But bills could be a problem for those still using paper statements for their payments.
Don’t recall much being written in the Toronto papers about the postal service negotiations.
Cute, Canada Post still thinks it’s relevant.
Ummm, for thousands of small businesses who use Canada post for small package shipping they are still relevant. Just because you think a few letters here and there aren’t important to you, don’t count the rest of us out. This is gonna kill my Etsy business until the strike is over. Fedex and UPS is too expensive to send small packages through – canada post was the only way I could keep my shipping costs down for all my customers and without service, I cannot ship to my customers nor can I get my supplies in.
Canada post still handles tons of online packages everyday.
Agreed!!!
Post office employees are under worked and overpaid. Fire the bunch of them and start over just like Regan did with air traffic controllers. Don’t want to work. You are fired. Plenty of others will.
Canada Post is still relevant for packages but not for old fashioned mail. They should also do away with daily mail delivery — waste of money. Mail delivery persons are redundant.
Let them go on strike for the next 6 months.
So this means if I have any letters to send by regular letter Mail within Canada I should mail them out before June 23 incase of an strike is that correct