Mail carrier consistently gave misleading, untrue responses to his postmaster’s inquiries
A Canada Post rural mail carrier dismissed after thousands of pieces of undelivered mail were found in his vehicle has been ordered reinstated without back pay, following a Canada Labour Code arbitration.
In Canada Post Corporation and Canadian Union of Postal Workers (Hyun Min Jang Grievances), Arbitrator Kathleen G. O’Neil ruled that termination was excessive given the worker’s record and mental health evidence, and substituted reinstatement on conditions.
Rural and Suburban Mail Carrier (RSMC) Hyun Min Jang transferred from Brampton, Ont. to a route in King City in June 2022. By mid‑September, he “had accumulated about six thousand pieces of undelivered mail in his vehicle,” O’Neil wrote.
Items included “wedding invitations, cheques, health cards, tickets, jury summons and immigration documents,” with delays “from days to over two months.”
Canada Post requires carriers to deliver assigned mail and return any undelivered items daily. The arbitrator noted that “no undelivered mail is to be kept out of the station overnight.” Complaints from customers led King City Postmaster Maria Catalano to inspect Jang’s vehicle on Sept. 14, 2022, where the backlog was discovered. Jang was suspended, investigated with the assistance of a postal inspector, and discharged on Oct. 12 that same year.
Previously, Ontario's Divisional Court ruled that the mail service cannot recover overpayments made to employees over five years because it failed to notify workers their wages might be clawed back.
Employer cites broken trust
In the Jang case, Canada Post argued that the volume of delayed mail, failure to secure it, and repeated denials when questioned destroyed the employment relationship.
O’Neil found that Jang had given “weeks of misleading and untrue responses to his postmaster’s inquiries,” calling this “clearly an aggravating, rather than a mitigating factor.”
Canada Post maintained that the “important bond of trust necessary to the job of delivering the public’s mail has been irreparably broken.”
The arbitrator nonetheless identified significant mitigation. “The grievor’s clean record over 8 years of service is the salient mitigating factor in my view,” she wrote. “The grievor has never had the benefit of progressive corrective discipline, so that I find the idea that the employment relationship cannot be repaired to be an untested assumption.”
Expert evidence established that Jang met criteria for Post‑traumatic Stress Disorder and an adjustment disorder. O’Neil concluded these conditions “likely contributed to his collapse in performance at his job in the summer of 2022,” and that his “failure to deal with his snowballing problem is consistent with the known symptoms of his underlying mental health conditions.”
They were “partially, not entirely, responsible for the grievor’s behaviours, thus leaving room for culpability.”
O’Neil ordered Jang reinstated as an RSMC “without compensation,” to King City “or such other position on which the parties can agree,” conditional on “adequate medical evidence” of fitness to return and any need for accommodation. Until then, he is to be on authorised leave without pay, with access to benefits available under the collective agreement.
Canada Post expects to eliminate 30,000 more jobs in the next few years, on top of job cuts announced in 2025.
