The Federal government puts an end to rotating strikes by postal workers

Canada Post workers were legislated back to work as of noon Tuesday, in advance of the busy holiday shipping season.

Canada Post employees told us they had hoped for a negotiated settlement between their union and the company.

The head of the Hamilton postal workers union says letter carriers are being burdened with more and more packages, without being given extra time to deliver them.

“We wanted to eliminate things like compulsory overtime. So a route doesn’t necessitate a 12 or 14 hour day just to complete that day’s delivery and then be asked to do it all again the next day.” Terry Langley, Hamilton postal workers union president.

He says postal workers are the most injured federal workers and injuries are up 43% over last year.

Workers have been trying to negotiate a contract with Canada Post for nearly a year and on Oct. 22 they began rotating strikes across the country.

“We kept it as a rotating strike so it would have minimal impact on the public, while still sending a message to Canada Post that we’re serious about our contract demands.”

The union plans to challenge the constitutionality of the back to work legislation, as it did successfully in 2011 but labour minister Patty Hadju says this bill is different.

“There are principles there that take into consideration some of the concerns the union has raised through repeated negotiation attempts and the financial viability of the corporation.”

the union says any backlog is typical for the season, but Canada Post is warning customers there will still be lengthy delays for the next several weeks due to what it calls unprecedented backlogs. It says hundreds of trailers are waiting to be unloaded and that delivery depots are at capacity.

Parcel delays are expected to get worse this week due to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Canada Post says mail and parcels are being processed and delivered on a first come first serve basis.