While Canada Post workers across the country have been ordered back to work on Tuesday, picket lines remain up at some locations, including two in Metro Vancouver.
Most employees were back on the job by 8 a.m. but the Vancouver local of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers said its members at the Canada Post Pacific Processing Centre in Richmond and International Facility in Burnaby will remain on the picket lines until 8 a.m. on Wednesday.
“So today, myself and other concerned citizens decided we would stop the workers and stop management from entering the postal outlet here because we are tired of the federal government’s section 107s, which takes away the workers’ rights to freely bargain,” Rob Ashton, International Longshore and Warehouse Union president, told Global News.
“What we are seeing is employers more empowered because we know the federal government is going to step in and do their dirty work.”
After a month-long work stoppage, the federal labour minister ordered Canada Post employees back to work over the weekend.
However, Andu Parmar, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Vancouver local 846, said they are now waiting for the concerned citizens to leave.
“So members are basically waiting for them to leave the picket lines, so we were not going to cross the picket lines for safety reasons,” she said.
The federal government has appointed an industrial inquiry commission to look into the sticking points in negotiations and provide recommendations by May 15.