Representatives of the fertilizer and other industries in Canada were hopeful that a strike by 2,800 union conductors and rail yard workers was near an end late last week after the Canadian government passed back-to-work legislation and the Canadian National Railway Co. agreed to lift its lockout of picketing workers.
The United Transportation Union-Canada began the strike on Feb. 10 over wage and work-related issues with the CN railroad. Striking laborers returned to work on Feb. 25 after a tentative agreement was reached between the two parties, but that one-year contract was rejected in a union vote on April 10, sending workers back to the picket lines in what the union termed a “rotating strike” across the CN system (GM April 16, p. 1).
The union had originally asked for a 4.5 percent wage increase in the first two years of a three-year contract, with a 4 percent increase in the final year. The tentative agreement that UTU voters ultimately rejected had called for a one-year contract with a 3 percent wage increase and a $1,000 signing bonus. Also at issue were what the union called “relationship issues” involving CN policies regarding lunch breaks and disciplinary actions.
The back-to-work legislation, passed by the House of Commons on April 17 and the Senate on April 18, will force CN and the UTU to submit best-offer proposals to a government-appointed arbitrator, who will then settle on one plan. CN also announced on April 18 that it would immediately lift its lockout of picketing workers, which it had ordered at eight locations on April 11 after the UTU voted to reject the tentative contract.
UTU expressed anger at Parliament’s intervention in the dispute last week, saying that it would not resolve the wage and work issues that caused the strike. Labor Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn had first introduced the bill back on Feb. 23 during the first walkout (GM March 5, p. 1), and had threatened to keep it on the table should the strike resume, arguing that the strike was too disruptive to Canada’s economy to be allowed to continue.
“This bill appears to be intended to pave the way for CN Rail to attack our rights,” UTU Vice Chairman John Armstrong said in a statement last week. “We are very disappointed that the government has interfered in our collective bargaining, but we have no choice.” Armstrong referred to the legislation as a “winner-take-all process, designed to compel both parties to move to the center.”
The Canadian Fertilizer Institute was one of many industry trade groups that had strongly favored government intervention in the dispute. “Ending the strike is critical to avoid crippling the movement of fertilizer throughout rural Canada as well as to export markets,” CFI said in an April 11 statement.
“The reality is that we live in a just-in-time world where companies have innovated and learned to reduce inventories,” added Perrin Beatty, president and CEO of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, in an April 17 statement. “If you don’t deliver on time, you won’t deliver again. Any kind of delay in the supply chain sends an immense ripple through the economy, taking money out of the pockets of Canadians.”
One of the options that CN has suggested is to negotiate separate accords with union members in eastern Canada, western Canada, British Columbia, and Quebec. The railroad faulted divided union leadership for making it impossible to reach a national settlement that would receive an affirmative vote from members. While some UTU members engaged in rotating strikes last week, CN said another faction remained on the job because they want to be represented by Teamsters Canada in the dispute.