Second sleepover: MPs debate Canada Post back-to-work bill

OTTAWA — Debate on back-to-work legislation for Canada Post workers has begun after an NDP motion to stop the bill failed to pass in the House of Commons early Saturday morning.

The Liberals and Conservatives voted together to defeat the NDP’s “hoist motion” by a vote of 160 to 74.

NDP leader Jack Layton had launched into the party’s first stalling tactic late Thursday night, when he presented the “hoist motion,” which would have effectively put the bill to bed — as if it had been defeated — for six months.

Exhausted MPs immediately began to state their cases for and against Bill C-6, which will get letters, bills, cheques and other documents once again flowing into mailboxes across the country.

But the NDP has vowed to draw out the debate, to allow postal workers and their managers more time to strike their own deal instead of being bound to one written by the government.

If passed, the bill will force 50,000 locked-out Canada Post employees back to the job.

The main sticking point over the bill is the wage settlements the federal government has written in.

Opposition MPs have condemned the salaries, and the bill as a whole, saying it undermines the right to collective bargaining.

But talks between the feuding sides collapsed late Wednesday night, and there is no indication either side is prepared to return to the table.

Not knowing how Thursday night and Friday morning would play out, some MPs, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, spent the entire night in the House of Commons.

Canada Post locked out its employees on June 14, after the Canadian Union of Postal Workers conducted 12 days of rotating strikes.

The Crown corporation blamed the two weeks of rotating strikes for estimated losses of $100 million.

Canada Post and the union went through seven months of failed negotiations before the rotating strikes began.

Aside from wages, changing the sick leave plan has also caused contention between the two sides; Canada Post had fought for a short-term disability plan to replace the practice of banking sick days.