Statement from Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan on use of Binding Arbitration in Rail Dispute

EDMONTON, AB – Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), made the following statement in response to the federal government forcing Teamsters Rail workers into binding arbitration:

“I just spent the day yesterday walking the picket line with locked out Teamsters Rail members in Edmonton. After listening to accounts from these frontline workers about what’s really happening at Canada’s two biggest railways, it’s clear to me that by granting CN and CPKC their wish for binding arbitration, the federal government is basically rewarding a foreign-owned cartel for its bad behaviour.

“I say this for three reasons: First, the service disruptions experienced across the country today were engineered by the companies, not the workers. The sides could have kept negotiating and the trains could have kept running: CN and CPKC just decided otherwise.

“Second, the decision by CN and CPKC to lockout their workers should be seen for what it is. It’s a temper tantrum thrown by anti-worker American corporate executives who don’t like Canadian labour laws and who just want to play by their own rules.

CN and CPKC manufactured a crisis in order to get the federal government to do what they didn’t want to do and what Canada’s evolving federal labour law says they shouldn’t do: strip workers of their constitutionally protected right to strike and bargain collectively. By giving CN and CPKC what they want, the federal government is essentially allowing two predominantly American owned companies to behave as if they are operating in Alabama, rather than Canada.

“Third, binding arbitration is the wrong way to go because it will not address the root causes of this dispute. The workers I spoke to today told stories of serious staffing shortages that are putting both service and safety at risk. But instead of addressing these shortages by making their companies more attractive places to work, both CN and CPKC want to force their already overworked staff to work even longer hours.

“The companies also refused to consider reasonable requests for wages that keep up with inflation (at a time when fees charged to shippers have increased at a rate far exceeding inflation). The two railways used to be highly prized places to work at, often with several generations of families proudly calling themselves railroaders. But that’s a thing of the past.

“Nowadays, both CN and CPKC are seeing annual employee turnover rates as high as 80 per cent. If the federal government allows CN and CPKC to impose their mean-spirited and family-unfriendly scheduling regimes, the problem of chronically under-staffed railways will only get worse, not better.

“In the end, there’s only one thing that we in the Canadian labour movement can agree with the CN and CPKC executives on: railroad workers provide a vital service. In fact, it’s too vital a service to be left in the hands of two price-gouging foreign monopoly companies. With that in mind, instead of helping American executives to screw Canadian workers, what I think the federal government should really do is consider ending our rail system’s disastrous experiment with vulture capitalism and re-nationalize our railroads.”