TORONTO (AP) — A union threatened to strike Friday at one of Canada’s two largest freight railroads, just hours after the company’s train service was halted following a potentially devastating standstill. A mediation hearing ordered by the government ended without a decision, and Canadian National trains were expected to continue running at least until Monday morning.
CN and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. locked out their workers on Thursday as negotiations over a new collective agreement stalled without agreement, leading to a near-total loss of freight service in the country for more than a day until Canadian National resumed operations Friday morning. Trains operated by CPKC are still idle and workers, who have been on strike since Thursday, remained on picket lines Friday.
The government forced the companies and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union into arbitration under the supervision of the Canada Industrial Relations Board – an order the union is contesting. The nine-hour hearing on Friday ended without an order from the board.
The union filed a 72-hour strike notice against CN on Friday morning, shortly after announcing its intention to challenge the arbitration award, union spokesman Marc-André Gauthier said.
If the board orders the union to return to work, “the TCRC will legally abide by the decision but will take all necessary steps to contest it,” the Teamsters said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this will not provide immediate relief, but the union is prepared to appeal in federal court if necessary.”
“We do not believe the issues we have discussed over the past few days are insurmountable, and we remain available for discussions to resolve this matter without further work disruption,” the union said in its letter to CN management.
Canadian National, where around 6,500 workers are involved in the strike, said the impact of the strike announcement would depend on the timing of the CIRB’s decision. “It is in Canada’s national interest that the CIRB decides quickly before even greater damage is done,” the railroad company said in a written statement. At CPKC, around 3,000 train drivers, conductors and dispatchers are involved in the strike.
Perrin Beatty, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said the union’s latest actions would “prolong the damage to our economy and threaten the well-being and livelihoods of Canadians, including union and non-union workers across many industries.”
Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon announced the decision to force the parties into binding arbitration on Thursday afternoon, more than 16 hours after the lockout brought the railway to a standstill. He said the economic risk was too great to allow work to continue. The government had refused to order arbitration two weeks ago. Mackinnon said he had hoped that negotiations between the companies and the union on a new contract would be successful. A spokesman for MacKinnon declined to comment on the strike announcement on Friday.
“This is not about disregarding the minister’s order. This is about exercising our rights,” said Francois Laporte, president of Teamsters Canada, on Friday when announcing the strike. “We will exercise our rights within the framework of the law.”
Canadian National trains began operating across Canada at 7 a.m., said CN spokesman Jonathan Abecassis. The development initially appeared to at least partially end a work stoppage that threatened to Cause chaos on the economies of Canada and the USA. Both countries rely on the railways across all industries to deliver their raw materials and finished products.
“While CN is focused on its recovery plan and stimulating the economy, the Teamsters are focused on getting back on the picket lines and subjecting the North American economy to their demands,” Abecassis said following the union’s strike announcement.
It is a relief for companies if even one of the railways is back in operation. Most of the railways’ industrial action in the past has only resulted in one of Canada’s railways being shut down, and the economy has been able to weather these disruptions well.
Negotiations, which began last year, have stalled over issues of worker scheduling and fatigue-prevention collective agreements. The railroad had proposed replacing the current system, which pays workers by the number of miles they travel, with a system based on hours worked. The railroad said the change would make it easier to provide predictable schedules. But the union opposed it, fearing the proposed changes would undermine hard-won fatigue protections and jeopardize safety.
Similar Quality of life concerns about demanding schedules and the lack of paid sick days drove the US railroads into on the verge of a strike two years ago, before Congress and President Joe Biden intervened and forced workers to agree to a deal.
Another issue at CN in Canada is the railway’s intention to develop a system that allows workers to be temporarily transferred to other parts of its network when there is a shortage of staff in a particular region.
As for wages, the railroads said they offered raises for these already well-paying jobs in line with other recent industry agreements. Canadian National said its train drivers earn about $150,000 and its conductors about $121,000 for working 160 days a year, although they spend some of their free time in hotels along the route between train runs to get their mandatory rest. According to CPKC, the pay is comparable.
Almost all of Canada’s freight transport by rail – worth over 1 billion Canadian dollars ($730 million) a day and over 375 million tonnes of freight last year – was halted on Thursday, as was rail traffic across the US border. Several smaller freight railroads that handle local deliveries continued to operate, but were unable to hand off deliveries to any of the major railroads during their shutdown.
In Canada, around 30,000 commuters were also affected because their trains use CPKC lines. In the USA and Mexico, CPKC and CN trains continued to run during the lockout.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, billions of dollars worth of goods are transported by rail between Canada and the United States every month.
“A lot of goods and services are shipped across borders,” Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said Friday at a rally in Calgary, Alberta. “If this company decides to continue its bad behavior, there will be repercussions. … They have to make a lot of decisions. And they have to make the most important decision: reward these workers with what they have earned and not try to lower safety just to increase their profits.”
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The article was edited to correct that the government had rejected the arbitration order two weeks ago, not one week ago.
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Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska.
