I'm very surprised. We have had many discussions with CUPW on health and safety. I should tell you, though, that these refusals to work started in November. We hadn't had a rash of refusals to work on safety grounds until then, and then it moved all across the country. We were a little bit taken by surprise, because a number of things had changed. The safety laws had changed. The group of employees who were delivering the mail in rural Canada became members of CUPW just two and a half or three years ago. Their status had moved from an independent contractor status to an employee status. So we were surprised by the refusals to work. We had to do our own homework. We had to find out what this was about. We had to do work. We're not experts in traffic safety. We had to get experts from the National Research Council to help us understand what has changed on these routes. We had to get ergonomic experts to help us.
In fact, of all the refusals to work that we have had, three-quarters of them are on ergonomic grounds. So we've had to get expertise in to help us. We have shared all of that expertise and research with CUPW.
We are trying to manage this in an orderly way. I think a disruption in service for rural Canadians is a very inconvenient thing. It is something that I personally apologize for. So what we've been trying to do is balance the need to continue service to rural Canadians in the face of this legal refusal to work, and manage, of course, our collective bargaining relationships. We have four of them. So I'm very surprised that CUPW would say that.
My colleague Mary Traversy is the senior vice-president of employee engagement and has the labour relations portfolio under her. I know she has had regular meetings at the national and local levels with CUPW. So I guess I am surprised.