Trains to roll again by Monday, after labour board imposes binding arbitration

by

More than nine thousand railway workers at both of Canada’s main railways — Canadian National Railway (CP) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railway (CPKC) — are returning to work after the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) decided to uphold the federal labour minister’s order to impose final and binding arbitration to reach new collective bargaining agreements between the railways and the union, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC).

Both railways are expected to have trains running by Monday, August 26, ending an unprecedented shutdown of the Canadian rail system that saw both CN and CPKC wind down to a complete standstill, while locking out their Teamster employees on Thursday, August 22.

The tribunal’s decision, issued late Saturday, extends the collective bargaining agreements that expired at the end of December 2023 until new deals are reached. It also requires no further labour stoppages during the arbitration process, voiding the plan by Teamsters who work at CN to go on strike on Monday if a deal hadn’t been reached.

While CN lifted its lockout and started resuming operations after Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon asked the CIRB to intervene on Thursday, CPKC only lifted its lockout after the CIRB ruling on Saturday. CPKC is asking workers to return to work for the day shift on Sunday, with the plan to restart railway operations by 00:01 ET on Monday, August 26.

While the union says it will comply with the CIRB decision, it also plans to appeal the government’s action in federal court.

“This decision by the CIRB sets a dangerous precedent. It signals to corporate Canada that large companies need only stop their operations for a few hours, inflict short-term economic pain, and the federal government will step in to break a union. The rights of Canadian workers have been significantly diminished today,” said union president Paul Boucher, on his way from Montreal to Halifax to protest the government’s intervention at the Liberals’ cabinet retreat on Monday.

Dozens of farm and agriculture industry groups are applauding the CIRB decision, with the daily cost of the dual rail stoppage during harvest tallying in the tens of millions of dollars for specific value chains, including cereal crops, canola, and fertilizer.

“We anticipate it will take several weeks for the railway network to fully recover from this work stoppage and a period of time beyond that for supply chains to stabilize,” noted CPKC.

CN said it is disappointed it could not reach a deal at the bargaining table, but the company is “satisfied that this order effectively ends the unpredictability that has been negatively impacting supply chains for months.”

Comments

Please Log in

Log in

or Register

Register

to read or comment!