THUNDER BAY — “I have 200 people that are waiting to hear what they’re doing tomorrow morning and it is now 3:30 and I don’t have an answer for them,” said Leo Favreau, the President of CUPW Local 620, which represents striking postal workers in Thunder Bay.
Favreau said Canada Post released a statement late Sunday night, saying that they were supposed to go back to work Tuesday morning, but the union only saw the back-to-work order on Monday.
The national union is still going through it, Favreau said, and until they actually say what is happening, he doesn't know what to tell workers.
He added that for him, the uncertainty feels horrible.
“We have a lot of very angry people right now, just angry at the fact that the government promised us they would not interfere in our strike and then they turned it around and interfered in our strike. And we still haven’t seen the proposal from Canada Post. I just don’t understand how all this can happen when, two weeks ago, we were told this wouldn’t happen,” said Favreau.
After two days of hearings, the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) has officially ordered striking postal workers return to work and postal operations to resume at 8 am on Tuesday, according to a media release from Canada Post.
This follows the Minister of Labour's request that the CIRB assess the likelihood of the Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) reaching agreements by the end of 2024.
Favreau doesn’t want to say too much without knowing what the national Board will say, but he said he knows how he feels and he feels that "this isn’t fair."
“This isn’t right. The government has just been pushing around labour so much that I think we’re all getting pretty tired of it and that’s about the best I can say,” said Favreau.
“They’re taking away our right to strike and they’ve had a year to negotiate and it just hasn’t been fair negotiation and now when it comes time to the crunch, they just simply send us back to work rather than negotiate,” said Favreau.
When asked how operations are expected to restart with the rushed back-to-work order, Favreau said he is also curious about the same thing.
“Logistically, I do not see how they can just start us back up," he said.
"Yes. This week, we were supposed to, on Wednesday, deliver the cheques from the government. That I can see us doing. But really, we walked out on a Friday night, so everything’s got to be processed and they want people back in at eight o’clock in the morning. Well, they can start processing stuff, but it takes a full shift to do that,” said Favreau.
He said there’s not much they can do, so they have to make the best of it for now and take tomorrow as it comes.
