Another strike is on at a major Canadian railroad. Members of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference walked off the job at Canadian Pacific Railway on May 16 when the railroad refused to give in to contract demands for a 13 percent wage increase over three years. CP is sticking to its offer of a 10 percent wage hike.
The walkout came less than a month after the Canadian government approved back-to-work legislation that forced a tentative truce in an earlier labor dispute between Canadian National Railway and the United Transportation Union. (GM April 23, p. 1).
The CP strike affects approximately 1,200 of the 3,200 workers who maintain track and bridges for the railroad. CP has replaced the striking workers with trained management for the duration of the strike, and has applied for injunctions in several Canadian cities to restrict protesters from blocking or impeding traffic. Injunctions prohibiting picketers from stopping truck traffic into and out of rail yards for longer than two minutes were granted last week at some intermodal terminals, including Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Vaughn, Ontario, and were under review in Calgary, Vancouver, and Etobicoke, Ontario.
CP maintained last week that the strike has not derailed train schedules, but truck delays ranging from a half-hour to six hours were reported at numerous intermodal terminals. Some customers expressed concerns that the strike will add to the backlog of product shipments created by the February walkout of United Transportation Union workers at the Canadian National Railway.
The Canadian Fertilizer Institute had voiced strong support for government intervention in the earlier CN strike, claiming that shipping delays caused by the walkout of conductors and yard personnel could have a profound impact on the timely movement of fertilizer products in advance of the spring season. The CP strike, however, is not as critical due to the workers involved and to its timing at the end of the busy planting season, CFI said.
“We’re always concerned about anything that might impact the shipment of fertilizer, but the reality in this case is that the timing is not as much of an issue,” said CFI Spokesperson Susan Sykes. While noting that CFI is “keeping on eye” on the strike process, Sykes said the “high season is over” for the fertilizer industry, and the workers that are striking “are not as critical to the movement of our product.”