RCMP officers have reached another milestone in their drive to form their first union.

The National Police Federation, which applied to represent 18,000 RCMP members, said a certification vote will be held this spring for Mounties to decide on the labour organization to represent them.

The Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board, which will conduct the vote, said the results will be sealed pending a decision whether 800 RCMP members in Quebec have the right to form their own union.

The Quebec Mounted Police Members Association has also applied for certification, but it only wants to represent RCMP in Quebec. It is challenging the constitutionality of the legislation that gave the Mounties the right unionize and called for a single police-only union.

NPF officials call the pending vote “historic” in the RCMP’s struggle for representation to deal with the force’s growing labour issues.

“At last, after too many years of funding, resource and training shortages, RCMP members will have an opportunity to choose experienced, focused and fair national representation that will give them a voice at the decision-makers’ table on labour and employment issues and opportunities,” said Brian Sauvé, a NPF founder and co-chair.

“We hope that the Quebec Association leaders will appreciate that it’s in the best interest of all members nationally to move forward expeditiously.”

The date for the electronic vote has yet to be announced but details will be sent front-line officers.

Eddie MacDonald, NFP co-chair, said it’s important to get word out about the vote which he called a “critical opportunity to change the unfair and frankly unsafe conditions members have experienced in recent years.”

NPF goes into the certification vote having signed up more than 10,600 front-line officers.

A 2015 Supreme Court of Canada decision recognizing the RCMP’s right to unionize prompted the biggest organizing drive in the public sector in decades. The government introduced Bill C-7, setting out a labour relations regime for the Mounties.

The RCMP’s dispatch operators and wiretap monitors recently voted to join the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) making them the first sworn members of Canada’s national police force to unionize.

The telecommunications operators and wiretap or intercept monitors are among the nearly 4,000 civilian employees that the RCMP is moving to the public service, leaving the force with only two categories of employees: public servants and police.