Canadians should expect to see mail arriving at their homes and businesses as soon as Tuesday, as newly passed legislation will force postal workers back to work within hours.

Canada Post spokesperson Jon Hamilton said postal workers will begin sorting through the mail that has accumulated during the strike and accompanying lockout when they return to work on Monday.

“What we’re going to do is move as quickly as possible to get the mail restored across Canada,” Hamilton told CTV’s Canada AM from Ottawa on Monday morning.

Hamilton said that once sorting begins, postal workers will be able to begin distributing the mail as soon as Tuesday afternoon.

Denis Lemelin, the president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, has said union members will obey the back-to-work order from the government that will come into full effect by the end of Monday.

But he said CUPW will examine the back-to-work legislation that passed Sunday to see if it has any holes to exploit — and the union will also take an aggressive stance during the upcoming arbitration process.

Forty-eight thousand urban postal workers began a series of rotating strikes on June 3, after failing to come to an agreement with Canada Post.

Wages for new employees, sick days and the company’s plan for the future were among the sticking points between the Crown corporation and its employees.

In the early days of the rotating strikes, the post office and the union remained engaged in negotiations. But the two sides didn’t get very far and Canada Post announced June 14 that it was locking out its striking workers.

A day later, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt signalled that the government would table back-to-work legislation if the two sides couldn’t reach a deal.

After that bill was subsequently tabled on June 20, the New Democrats spoke out against the government’s efforts to quash the labour dispute on the basis that the legislation wasn’t fair to the striking workers.

Then the Official Opposition used a filibuster — a non-stop debate in the House of Commons — to hold up passage of the back-to-work bill for 58 hours. But they could only stall the bill for so long and it finally passed, was approved by the Senate and received royal assent all during the same weekend.

Question Period host Jane Taber said the NDP’s staunch support of the postal workers got mixed reviews from critics. While the Opposition’s debate manoeuvre in the House of Commons held up the bill, it did not stop it from passing.

“This is the Harper government at work. This is the new muscular NDP opposition showing that it was not going to be cowed by what this majority government was doing,” Taber told CTV’s Canada AM from Ottawa on Monday morning.

(Source: CTV)