The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, a union representing 4,800 engineers, conductors, and rail traffic controllers, went on strike shortly after midnight May 22 after negotiations with Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) failed to produce a new labor deal.
The strike halts CP’s freight services across Canada, although commuter-train services in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, will remain in operation after CP and the union agreed ahead of the strike deadline to allow those services to continue.
Canadian Labor Minister Lisa Raitt is scheduled to meet with the two sides on May 23 when negotiations resume. "The Government is concerned about the national economic significance this will have and we are prepared to act in the interest of the national economy," Raitt said in a statement.
The Canadian Fertilizer Institute (CFI) on May 21 issued a statement urging the Canadian government to act quickly to enact back-to-work legislation, saying ending the strike “is critical to sustaining Canada’s domestic and export markets.”
CFI said the Canadian fertilizer industry faces an annual logistical challenge of moving 25 million mt of product, and member companies are currently facing the combination of tight inventories and strong global demand for all fertilizer products.
“The domestic, U.S., and offshore demand for Canadian fertilizer has been very high this spring and this trend is expected to continue,” CFI said. “Our members currently have large unit trains of potash scheduled to move from western Canada to Vancouver for export offshore, as well as various fertilizer products scheduled to move domestically and cross-border to the important U.S. market. CFI members simply cannot afford the repercussions of a rail disruption.”
CFI President Roger Larson added that “once this issue is resolved, the government must look at long-term action to prevent labor disputes that are essential to the long-term economic health of our country.”
CP and the union, which has been without a contract since the end of December, are at odds over employee pension benefits.