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Canada Post faces financial trouble, cost-cutting deemed

necessary

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Union rejects latest offer, blames government for

worsening

dispute

By Wa Lone

TORONTO, Oct 10 (Reuters) - The Canadian Union of Postal

Workers will resume mail delivery on Saturday and rotate which

workers are on strike in a labor dispute that has halted mail

services nationwide for about two weeks.

CUPW said the rotating strikes, starting at 6 a.m. in each

time zone, will allow mail and parcels to move again while

maintaining pressure on Canada Post, a government-owned company,

to reach a fair collective agreement.

More than 55,000 postal workers walked off the job on

September 25, hours after Public Works and Procurement Minister

Joël Lightbound announced an overhaul of Canada Post that the

union expects to result in job losses. The announcement came

during a long round of negotiations that began in late 2023 and

was interrupted by a postal worker strike last year.

"We did not take the decision to move to a nation-wide

strike lightly," said Jan Simpson, CUPW's national president, in

a statement late on Thursday. "Postal workers would much rather

have new collective agreements and be delivering mail instead of

taking strike action."

Canada Post did not immediately respond to a request for

comment.

The postal service has struggled as its letter volume

declines and it faces private-sector competition to ship

parcels.

Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the postal

service was a vital public institution but acknowledged Canada

Post was in a difficult financial position. He said the

corporation was losing millions of dollars and stressed the need

for restructuring, adding that changes had been overdue for some

time.

CUPW has rejected Canada Post's latest offer and says the

government's intervention has worsened the dispute.

(Editing by Rod Nickel)