Ivan Drury Zarin
Posted October 8, 2025
At the end of their first week back out on strike, I visited a Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) picket line to bring them a box of baked goods and a message of solidarity. This report reflects on the dynamics of the strike, good and bad.
I’m sorry to say that the mood at the postal workers’ picket line is more browbeaten than it was when they were out in December. Some strikers told me that people are driving down their lines to yell at them to get back to work, accusing them of “always striking.” This might be a result of the more hostile anti-union coverage the strike is getting in the media.
Worse is that a gulf has grown between the workers and the union leadership. Strikers told me they are feeling it was a mistake to obey the back-to-work order back in December, and they resent that they were sent back to work by executive decision; there was no opportunity to vote on the question. The resistance of Air Canada flight attendants, who refused a back-to-work order in August, shows that it is possible to refuse anti-union government orders and break anti-union laws without even going to jail.
A consequence of CUPW’s obeying of the government back-to-work order is that Canada Post won critical time. The company got through the holiday season, when the union had more leverage, and then foot-dragged until the government made its announcement of massive cuts that will end home delivery across Canada. Thousands of jobs will be cut, and the bargaining power of the union has been devastated — a fact reflected in the company’s new contract offer that repeats its meager wage offer and withdraws a signing bonus.
CUPW responded to the announcement of cuts with the current walkout, which was also ordered from above without the organized participation of CUPW members. One striker told me they thought this sudden strike preempted the possibility of escalating actions like refusing flier delivery, which would have kept members working, forestalling picket line fatigue, and could have prepared politically for a full work stoppage at a more strategic moment. It’s hard not to see the sudden full strike as a bright flash without sustained heat, a big show of resistance without a big plan for victory. Workers should be on guard against a recommendation for a major concession deal from CUPW leadership.
The bright spot is that autonomous actions by rank-and-file members are continuing to influence the strike. When CUPW brass told members to obey the back-to-work order in December, some members across the country refused. Some kept up wildcat picket lines, and some collaborated with community groups and workers from other unions who set up solidarity pickets that posties could then refuse to cross, citing the right to refuse unsafe work.
At the picket line I visited, members were talking about setting up protest pickets at politician constituency offices, and at the delivery depots of Purolator, a major cross-Canada package delivery company. Targeting Purolator would be a powerful intervention against a hidden layer of Canada Post’s anti-union maneuvers. Canada Post owns 91% of Purolator, and uses it to undermine CUPW, which has historically been one of the more militant unions in Canada.
Some strikers told me that they thought one reason CUPW leaped directly to a full strike now was because some postal workers on the Atlantic coast had already started wildcat strike actions. So while the exit ramp of the current strike might not be clear, its roots are interwoven with rank-and-file workers’ militancy.
The CUPW strike action comes out of an unstable unity between the official labor leadership and organic rank-and-file leaders. While labor law is designed to allow bureaucrats to commandeer workers’ power into legal dead ends, they could not pull off this appropriation if their members were not dependent on those legal-bureaucratic organizational structures.
What’s become clear in this long strike, which spans from the last work stoppage in December 2024 to the current one in October 2025, is that workers need strike committees and other ad hoc organizations that are independent of the union leadership. Without sustained, coordinated organization that can facilitate communication between rank-and-file members and coordinate action against leaderships that can play a coordination role with management, the sort of militant rank-and-file initiatives that push strikes forward can be contained.
In short, the decision about whether to obey a government back-to-work order is too important to be left to the bureaucrats that are insulated from the consequences of that decision.
The day before visiting the CUPW strike, I stopped by a picket line for another big strike: the British Columbia Government and General Employees Union (BCGEU) strike against the Provincial government. BCGEU represents 35,000 employees ranging from government liquor store workers to welfare and social workers.
The strike is now in its third week, and has been slowly escalating — with all government liquor stores and distribution warehouses (the only real revenue-generating section of the bargaining unit) now shut down. Because most of their members are public service workers, their leverage will come from public support, and especially support from other unions.
Striking workers at the government liquor store in the West End of Vancouver told me they’re having a hard time keeping new workers because they start at only $22/hour. Scheduling is also a problem for new workers and those who don’t get a regular shift and remain classified auxiliary workers, because they’re being stretched to fill the gaps of the resulting understaffing. They’re too often getting booked for closing and opening shifts back-to-back.
The NDP government is still refusing to seriously engage the union at the bargaining table. On Monday, the government representatives were three hours late to bargaining, and when they did show up, they brought essentially the same offer they had tabled previously, and which the union wholly rejected.
Wages are the big sticking point. The union is only asking for a 4% increase over a two-year contract, and the government’s counter on Monday was 1.5%, up a miserly 0.5% from its previous offer.
BCGEU is a massive union in British Columbia, and has historically played a major role in the BC Federation of labor as well as in campaigning for the Provincial NDP. I read the NDP government’s refusal to engage BCGEU at the bargaining table as a bad sign about the BC NDP’s continued drift rightward, and of the deep commitment to social wage austerity at all levels of government in this country.
The CUPW strike should garner widespread active solidarity from other unions in Canada because they are clearly facing the cutting edge of the federal government’s austerity and privatization logic. In BC, the BCGEU should be getting similar support because the government is using this strike to try to lower the bar of expectation for the working class generally. Support was shown in a rally of thousands on Wednesday evening in downtown Vancouver in support of BCGEU, which also featured solidarity calls for CUPW. But I’m afraid one-off rally supports will not be enough, but solidarity job actions so far remain unthinkable.
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