Labour lawyer calls Canada Post deal ‘unusual’ without contract

Employment and labour lawyer Sundeep Gokhale says the deal coming just one day after announcing massive losses may not be a coincidence.

An employment and labour lawyer has called the latest tentative deal, reached without a contract between Canada Post and the union “unusual,” after nearly two years of bargaining between the two parties.

Sundeep Gokhale told CTV News Channel on Saturday that typically, a union and an organization come to a memorandum of agreement, which includes all the details about what this deal will entail.

“What they’ve done is they’ve said, ‘conceptually, we’ve agreed on the big picture issues. But now we’re going to put pen to paper, and provided that we have an agreement... we’ll ultimately take it to a ratification vote,’” Gokhale said.

According to him, the timing of this agreement announcement is “interesting,” since Canada Post announced a quarterly loss of more than $500 million on Friday and added that they will need a further bailout from the federal government.

“All of a sudden, then there’s an agreement to ultimately get to a tentative agreement,” Gokhale added.

“I do believe Canada Post didn’t move off their tenants needing to eliminate some of the rural offices (and) community mailboxes. They needed some of that flexibility, and I think they’re ultimately going to get that through this collective agreement.”

Both Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) confirmed that the deal was moving forward on Friday, with the Crown corporation agreeing to the same terms for any lockout action.

“The parties have reached agreements in principle but have yet to finalize tentative collective agreements for signing,” Canada Post said in a statement Friday.

“While we do so, we have agreed that all strike/lockout activity is suspended. As the parties work to finalize the tentative agreements, we will make no comment on the details of any potential agreement.”

The two sides have locked horns over issues like wage increases and structural changes to the workforce for the last few years, including employing more part-time employees.

Recently, the federal government announced changes to the corporation’s mandate to allow for major changes to its operations.

Canada Post has declined CTV News’ requests for an interview.

With files from the Canadian Press