Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu says she will exercise her authority to force a vote on Canada Post’s final offers to the mail carriers’ union.

“After 18 months of negotiation, over 200 meetings … 33 days of strike and a lockout in the fall,” a vote is “in the public interest,” Hajdu wrote in an online statement.

Canada Post told CTV News in a statement Thursday morning that it “welcome(d) the Minister’s decision,” saying it would “provide employees with the opportunity to have a voice and vote on a new collective agreement at a critical point in our history.”

Later in the day, Canada Post representative Jon Hamilton pointed to the vote as a path toward the carrier’s next chapter.

“We’re saying: ‘Look, we’re trying to start making changes to fix Canada Post, and ensure that it’s secure for the people that work there and the people that depend on it,’ and that’s important, for employees to have a voice in that,” he told CTV News.

“Ultimately, it’ll be up to them, and it’s their decision.”

Meanwhile, Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) spokesperson Jim Gallant told CTV News Thursday afternoon that the union was “disappointed and a bit pissed off” at the news.

“The minister, again, is tipping the scale of justice towards the employer,” he said.

Canada Post requested Hajdu order the vote at the end of May, days after submitting its final offer.

In early June, the CUPW released a statement describing such a “forced vote” as “an attack on the most basic rights of trade unions to represent their members.

Gallant said Thursday that nothing has really changed in the last two weeks of negotiations, during which time the minister asked the parties back to the bargaining table with the aid of federal mediators, but that a “yes” vote on the offer as it stands would be a “gutting” of the previous collective agreement.

“I can tell you: I get one vote, and my vote will be a ‘no,’ vote, and I know a lot of my friends will be the same,” he said.