CUPW members on the picket line, November 2024. Photo courtesy CUPW-STTP/Facebook.

In an unprecedented move in the history of collective bargaining at the federal level in Canada, Minister of Jobs and Families, Patty Hajdu, agreed to a request from Canada Post that she use her power under section 108.1 of the Canada Labour Code to order a vote on the final offers that Canada Post submitted to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) on May 28, 2025. The Canada Industrial Relations Board will be responsible for conducting the vote.

According to CUPW National President Jan Simpson, the minister’s decision is “yet another assault” on the union’s collective bargaining rights. It comes on the heels of other attacks against CUPW in recent months. Last December, then Minister of Labour Steven MacKinnon used section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to put the legal strike on hold and invoked section 108 to create a Commission of Inquiry into Labour Relations.

Each time it has intervened, the government has done so in favour of Canada Post management: the suspension of CUPW’s legal strike; the creation of a Board of Inquiry with a mandate biased towards management positions; and now,........

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