Teamster Canada has stated that it will lawfully comply with the CIRB decision, but it plans to appeal the ruling in federal court.

The main issues that were at the negotiation tables between the union and the two main Canadian railroad companies, Canadian National (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC), have to do with fatigue, rest, scheduling, and forced relocation. The railroad workers commonly work 80+ hour workweeks for these billion-dollar companies. The Teamsters union disagreed with CN and CPKC over scheduling, shift duration, and availability. For example, in a proposal that is opposed by the union, CN wants to negotiate an increase in work hours from 10-hour shifts to 12-hour shifts.

“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, inflicting 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 Paul Boucher, President of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference.

“The Trudeau Liberals have chosen to side against middle- and working-class Canadians, abandoning their supposed progressive values at the first sign of short-term supply chain disruptions. The Teamsters have fought to protect rail safety in Canada, improve working conditions, and prevent CN from forcing workers to relocate thousands of kilometers away from their families—and we will continue to do so,” added Boucher.

The unfortunate results delivered by the CIRB remind us that here in the United States a similar conflict occurred between our railroad unions and the corporations back in 2022, which led to Congress declaring any attempt at a railroad strike action to be illegal and forced American railroad workers back to work.

Like their counterparts in the U.S., the Canadian companies used the threat of economic turmoil to coerce the Canadian government into submitting to their demands. This comes as the railroad corporations make record profits and continue the practice of stock buybacks while they refuse to acknowledge the union’s demand for a fair work schedule.

LUEL supports the Teamster’s legal battle in Canada against the decision to prevent workers from striking. The attack on workers in Canada is an attack against workers here in the US.

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“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.”

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