Postal workers who want to discuss the way forward in their struggle and share their views on the tentative agreements should contact the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee at canadapostworkersrfc@gmail.com or by filling out the form at the end of this article.

More than three months after the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) announced “agreements in principle” with Canada Post and ordered workers back on the job, the full draft collective agreements for Urban Postal Operations and Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers were finally released on February 24. 

A review of the tentative agreements makes clear that workers must reject these rotten deals with a resounding “No,” while voting “Yes” in the parallel strike authorization ballot.

Such action would be a vital first step in a renewed struggle by the 55,000 postal workers to defend their jobs and working conditions, the postal service and public services more broadly.

This fight will require a broadening of the struggle to all sections of workers, public and private, under conditions where the Mark Carney-led federal Liberal government is hell bent on using society’s resources to fund a massive military build-up and the enrichment of the financial oligarchy.

The agreements’ contents confirm the warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site in January: the CUPW-backed deals constitute a historic sellout that establishes the mechanism for the Amazonification of Canada Post demanded by the Liberal government and Canada Post management. They aim to shred jobs, working conditions and living standards. 

CUPW has announced that the vote on the tentative agreements is set to take place between April 20 and May 30 and is open to members in good standing who attend a membership information meeting in person or online. Workers will be voting at the same time on a separate ballot authorizing strike action.

The release of the draft contracts and establishment of voting dates comes just weeks after Ottawa announced on February 5 that it would provide Canada Post with an additional $1.01 billion in repayable loans, on top of the $1.03 billion advanced in January 2025. 

The government explicitly tied this latest bailout to the implementation of “reforms” to make the corporation financially “viable.” Public Services and Procurement Canada bluntly declared that maintaining the status quo “is not an option.” Canada Post, for its part, stated that it has submitted its transformation plan to the government and is prepared to take “decisive action” to ensure long-term financial sustainability. This latest bailout is intended to keep the corporation operating while the plan to restructure Canada Post at workers’ expense is carried out.

The full draft texts include new workload measurement systems, revised job classifications, expanded flexibility provisions and parcel-focused delivery models that allow management to lengthen routes, reduce overtime and replace full-time jobs with lower-paid part-time positions.

The urban operations draft agreement formalizes a new parcel delivery model and establishes frameworks for weekend pickup and parcel delivery. Weekend operations are central to Canada Post’s profitability drive, combined with a reliance on part-time, precariously employed workers to avoid having to pay overtime as much as possible. The draft agreements create the labour “flexibility” required to expand to seven-day delivery, including expanded part-time and “unstructured” classifications that erode established routes and predictable schedules.

A key component of the new model is the creation of Parcel Delivery Part-Time (PD PT) positions assigned to centralized parcel delivery installations. The agreements specify that most of these workers’ hours will be scheduled on weekends. Staffing levels will be determined through formulas that divide parcel volumes by “activity-per-hour” productivity targets. In plain language, management will calculate how many parcels each worker is expected to deliver per hour and then determine how many workers are needed. If productivity targets increase, fewer workers will be required.

This is exactly how Amazon and other logistics giants organize their operations. The agreements lay the groundwork for transforming Canada Post into a weekend-driven parcel logistics operation staffed increasingly by a precarious, low-wage workforce.

New classifications such as Permanent Flex Employees and Part-Time Unstructured workers will create a large pool of highly exploited postal workers with virtually no rights in the face of management’s drive to boost profitability. These new classifications will also be used to undermine conditions for all workers, mirroring the two-tier schemes imposed in other industries after the 2008 financial crisis. Autoworkers and others were told these changes would be temporary concessions, but they became permanent tools for degrading conditions across the workforce.

For Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers (RSMCs), the most consequential change is the transition from the longstanding route-evaluation model to an hourly rate system governed by a new Work Content Model and RSMC Workload Measurement System. Presented by CUPW as a long-standing demand finally realized, the introduction of the new-hourly paid system will allow management to determine route structure, workload and pay through centralized measurement formulas. It includes route verification procedures and statistical sampling methods that allow management to recalculate work hours and reorganize routes according to standardized formulas.

The agreements explicitly seek to suppress overtime and maximize labour output under the new model. The agreements state that work beyond scheduled hours should be assigned “in a manner to maximize work paid at straight time.” In other words, management can pile on additional work while avoiding overtime pay.

Although CUPW claims that overtime rules for RSMCs will be “the same as the Urban unit,” the agreements establish significantly worse thresholds. Urban carriers receive double-time after two hours of overtime, while RSMCs would only qualify after three hours—potentially at the twelve-hour mark of a scheduled nine-hour shift.

The inclusion of pay protection language during the transition makes clear that recalculations are expected to reduce evaluated hours and earnings for significant numbers of carriers. Under the new structure, faster and more experienced workers stand to lose as management gains the authority to redefine what constitutes a “full” day’s work.

The restructuring is reinforced by a memorandum on implementing the new system known as the “People Plan.” The memorandum includes a limited “no layoff” commitment, but only for current regular employees such as permanent route holders and permanent flex employees. More precarious classifications, including on-call relief workers, receive no such protection. Even these protections apply only to the initial restructuring of offices under the new workload measurement regime, leaving the door open for subsequent reductions through attrition and future reorganizations.

This shift dovetails with the broader restructuring objectives announced by the government in September, when it authorized the elimination of door-to-door delivery, a vast expansion of community mailboxes, the lengthening of delivery standards and the conversion or closure of rural and suburban post offices. Canada Post executives have openly discussed eliminating tens of thousands of jobs by 2035. An hourly system governed by centrally controlled metrics provides the administrative architecture for attrition, route merging and workforce reduction under the banner of efficiency.

The agreements also include a side letter titled “Moving Forward to Secure the Future of Canada Post,” which explicitly references the government’s September 2025 restructuring plan. While management promises that certain transformational initiatives will not involve contracting out of delivery work, the letter underscores that the restructuring will proceed within the framework of the government’s mandate. The assurances offered are narrowly limited and do nothing to prevent job losses through retail closures, route consolidation, speedup and internal reclassification.

CUPW has sought to reassure workers by pointing to wage increases and benefit improvements. Yet the wage provisions must be assessed in light of the suspension and restructuring of cost-of-living protections.

By tying later-year wage increases to the official Consumer Price Index while suspending automatic cost-of-living protections, the agreements guarantee real wage erosion as housing, food and transportation costs continue to rise faster than official inflation. At the same time, productivity demands will intensify as routes are recalculated and parcel volumes drive scheduling.

The CUPW bureaucracy bears direct responsibility for the government-backed onslaught against postal workers. The bureaucracy’s posture of internal dissent, with a minority of five out of 15 national executive members voting against the deal, functions as an alibi for a leadership that has steered the struggle into a dead end and tied it to the pro-business collective bargaining framework under government supervision. While CUPW has systematically isolated postal workers from their allies across the working class for three years, the Canadian Labour Congress and its other affiliates have remained silent, even though it is clear that the government sees Canada Post as a benchmark for the kind of attacks it wants to enforce against all public- and private-sector workers.

Postal workers have demonstrated their willingness to fight, and the conditions exist for a broader mobilization in their defense. Federal public sector workers face mass job cuts. Manufacturing workers, including those at GM’s Oshawa plant, have been thrown out of work amid a roiling trade war launched by US President Donald Trump and fuelled by the retaliatory measures adopted by corporate Canada. The assault on postal workers is part of a wider offensive against jobs, wages and the right to strike.

What is required is a conscious break from the strategy imposed by the union bureaucracy. The defense of decent, secure postal jobs and a public postal service cannot be reconciled with a profit mandate dictated by the government and implemented through joint labour-management mechanisms. Workers must organize independently, through rank-and-file committees in every depot and facility, to prepare a counteroffensive led by workers on the shop floor against the subordination of worker rights to the generation of profit.

The Canada Post workers’ struggle must become the starting point for a mass industrial and political mobilization of the working class as a whole to protect and massively expand public services; place AI and other new technologies at the service of the working class rather than corporate profit; expropriate the ill-gotten wealth of the super-rich and use it to meet social needs; and fight for workers’ power.

The fight to defend jobs and public services is inseparable from a broader struggle against austerity and war policies that place corporate profit and the predatory geopolitical interests of Canadian imperialism above social need. Postal workers stand at the forefront of that struggle and will receive powerful support throughout the working class if they appeal for it. CUPW’s corporatist ties to the government and management make it organically hostile to such a strategy, which requires the active intervention of the rank and file with their own organizations of class struggle and a socialist program.