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If you haven’t yet received an item held up by the five-week Canada Post strike, it could arrive today or on Christmas Eve.

The Crown corporation, whose 55,000 workers were sent back to work last week by the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB), said in a Friday statement that all late packages had been processed and were ready for delivery, if not already sent.

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In early December, the number of overdue items reached 12 million, according to the Financial position.

“We hope that a significant portion of these items will be delivered before Christmas,” he wrote.

To help stabilize the postal network and move more items for delivery, Canada Post has asked employees to deliver mail to some cities over the weekend.

Delivery days in January

Operations resumed last week, but it took two days later for Canada Post to return to full capacity and begin accepting new packages into the system.

With the on-time service guarantee still suspended, there is virtually no chance that anything dropped off today will be fulfilled within a day and the company said delays for many domestic packages would extend to at the beginning of January.

“Between urban centers, Canadians should expect package delivery times of two to three days,” the organization said.

“For packages traveling longer distances, expect delays of up to 10 days.”

Anyone wondering where their package is in the system must have requested tracking at the post office or when they printed a label at home. Otherwise, “we have no way of identifying this package in the mail stream to track it,” Canada Post media relations told the National Post in an email.

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“In case of misplaced tracking information, the customer should contact the shipper to obtain this information.”

Although it continues to process a backlog of international mail and packages, Canada Post also began accepting international items as of Monday morning.

The United States Postal Service, however, is maintaining its suspension of service until its Canadian postal counterparts can catch up. USPS plans to resume accepting mail to Canada within two weeks.

Regardless of the destination, Canadians will want to act quickly since post offices will be closed and there will be no collection or delivery on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, nor on New Year’s Day.

Union grievances

The Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), which has already called for a return to work mandate a violation of the rights guaranteed by the Charter and contests the interventionreleased its own statement Friday saying it discussed reported violations of the collective agreement with the Labor Relations Board.

“We are hearing about multiple situations that could constitute violations of the collective agreement and we are working with (Canada Post) at the national level to resolve all of these. » »wrote grievance officer Carl Girouard.

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In some cases, workers reported that overtime was denied when requested. The union said Canada Post has not made any changes to how overtime is handled and that “some locations have very low mail volumes.”

The union is also unhappy that Canada Post asked everyone assigned long-term to a specific depot, outlet or route before the strike to reapply now that the union impasse is over.

CUPW’s current challenges will be heard by the CIRB on January 13 and 14.

The CIRB’s directive extended the existing collective agreement until May 2025. It also called on Canada Post to follow through on the 5 per cent wage increase, retroactive to January 2024, which was part of its latest offer to the union. Of this amount, between $500 and $1,000, depending on the worker’s classification, must be reimbursed before Christmas Eve. Full payment of retroactive salary is due no later than January 31, 2025.

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