As of 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday, December 17, striking Canada Post workers across the nation have been ordered back to work.

The strike, which began on November 15, lasted a full month, a period during which Canadians have been forced to go without incoming mail, with the exception of select government benefit cheques.

“On December 13, the Minister of Labour established a process with the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to assess the likelihood of the parties reaching agreements by the end of 2024,” stated a Canada Post release last week. “If the CIRB considers this to be unlikely, it would order postal operations to resume and the terms of the existing collective agreements to be extended until May 22, 2025.”

Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) were expected to participate in a CIRB hearing this past weekend.

The result of that process was the decision by the Minister of Labour, Steven MacKinnon, for the workers to return to their jobs.

Jan Simpson, CUPW president, responded to this ruling on behalf of the CUPW’s national executive board. Simpson has called the action a stripping of postal workers’ right to strike but says the fight will go on.

She instructs workers to return to their regular shifts on December 17 and await further instructions from the CUPW. Workers have also been asked not to prevent preparations for the resumption of Canada Post operations.

“We understand that members want to hold the line until the last minute to show our disgust with what is currently happening,” Simpson said in a CUPW update on December 16. “[But] contravening this order may push the employer to go back to the CIRB for enforcement of their decision.”

In the meantime, a commission will be appointed by the federal government with a mandate to help find a way to break though the bargaining impasse between the two parties. The deadline for this process is May 15, a date that will mark 18 months since negotiations began.

“The inquiry will have a broad scope, as it will examine the entire structure of Canada Post from both a customer and business model standpoint, considering the challenging business environment now facing Canada Post,” MacKinnon writes in a press statement.

For now, both parties have agreed that a five percent wage increase will be applied retroactive to the date that the last agreement expired.

Canada Post warns that four weeks of mail and parcel backlog won’t be corrected overnight. Delays should be expected into January 2025.