Canada Post strike ends, but Windsor businesses still feel the pain

Canada Post resumes CTV Windsor's Travis Fortnum has a local look at Canada Post resumption.

While small businesses in Windsor are relieved to see Canada Post moving again, many are still feeling the sting of the four-week work stoppage.

Kat Pasquach, owner of Culture Shock Bead Co., said the strike’s impact on her business has been severe.

"I was looking at the sales and I was actually astonished to see they're down 61 per cent,” she said. “It was a massive hit.”

Pasquach’s Windsor-based business, which supplies beads and craft materials largely to rural and Indigenous communities across Canada, saw its operations crippled by the strike.

"They don't have access to courier service. It was as simple as that,” she said. “We weren't able to get shipments to them.”

Even when a courier could have come through, Pasquach said price surges fueled by the strike turned her customers off the option.

"I got a quote for Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. It was $50 approximately,” she detailed. “Nobody wants to pay that for $40 worth of beads.”

This blow came at a crucial time of year, with many of her customers typically placing orders in the weeks leading up to Christmas — to in turn make and sell their wares.

At this point, the resumption of postal flow brings little relief.

"We have one weekend left before the holidays. I don't think there's going to be a huge comeback in terms of sales," she said.

Despite her frustrations, Pasquach said she supports Canada Post employees and was disheartened by how the strike ended.

"I'm happy that Canada Post workers are going back, but I'm also quite disappointed about how it happened,” she explained. “I don't believe that workers should be mandated to go back to work. I think the employer should have been mandated to come to a consensus with its team.”

The Canada Industrial Relations Board ordered postal workers back under their existing contracts, which have been extended until May to allow more time for negotiations. Canada Post agreed to a retroactive five per cent wage increase.

However, union leaders, like Mark Lubinski, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers Toronto Local, remain frustrated with the government’s intervention.

"What the government has done to us is disgusting. They toyed us along for four weeks. They lied to us, saying they want good faith bargaining, and that was never their intent," Lubinski said, adding that the union plans to appeal the back-to-work order.