Above photo: File photo of CN Rail freight trains at Macmillan Yard in Vaughan, Ontario. Tony Bock/Toronto Star.
Workers of CPKC and CN, companies that own a combined 75 per cent of the country’s railroads, are set to hold a strike vote on April 8.
A strike could have repercussions on everything from Via Rail to the shipping of grain.
Workers at Canada’s two largest rail companies are preparing for a strike vote that could have severe ramifications for commercial and passenger transportation across the country.
Combined, Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC, formerly CP Rail) own and operate over 75 per cent of the country’s rail network, though those tracks could soon go quiet as ongoing negotiations with the rail workers union have thus far been fruitless.
Separate collective bargaining agreements between each respective company and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) union expired at the end of 2023. Under Canadian labour law, those agreements remain in place until new deals are reached, though the parties remain far apart on rest provisions for workers.
“Rail safety, that’s the big issue,” said Christopher Monette, director of public affairs at TCRC. “They aim to eliminate all of the safe critical rest provisions from our collective agreement, and these are articles in our collective agreement designed to mitigate and combat crew fatigue when it comes to workers who are operating freight trains across Canada.”
Monette said CN and CPKC are putting the public and their own employees at risk through their willingness to compromise safety standards.
“That’s a non-starter,” said Monette.
Both companies have previously said their respective offers are aligned with the federal government’s rules and regulations for rail safety.
“Importantly, neither of [our] proposals, or anything CPKC has put forward, creates any risk to safety or employee well-being,” read a statement from CPKC.
“To say otherwise is patently false.”
Meanwhile, CN said its latest offer puts limits on the number of hours employees work, giving workers advanced notifications of scheduled rest breaks.
According to Monette, the TCRC union, which represents over 9,000 conductors, locomotive engineers and yard workers from both CN and CPKC, has been lobbying the feds for years in search of more favourable rest and duty rules. He said most rail workers are on-call and work highly irregular schedules, and the safety concerns associated with employee work-life balance have not been represented in offers from either company.
“They are constantly coming back to us with proposals that we think would put lives at risk, and we’re not going down that road,” said Monette.
After months of stalled negotiations, the gap between the parties led both companies to file notices of dispute with the federal government last month. Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan has since appointed federal conciliators tasked with helping to resolve the impasses with both companies.
A spokesperson for O’Regan told iPolitics the government continues to monitor the situation and is confident deals will be reached in both cases.
O’Regan has often touted the “96 per cent success rate” of the federal mediation and conciliation in avoiding work stoppages, though they’ll be working on a particularly constrained timeline for this occasion.
TCRC has notified its membership a strike vote will be organized for April 8, which will give workers multiple weeks to make their decision before the final results are tabulated at the start of May.
The earliest a work stoppage could occur is May 22, though Monette said the union has not ruled out the possibility of being locked out.
“A work stoppage with all… bargaining units at the same time would likely disrupt supply chains on a scale that Canada has likely never experienced,” said Monette. “Their networks will be very severely affected in the event of a work stoppage.”
For example, the federally-owned Via Rail operates over 500 trains across eight provinces almost exclusively on tracks owned by CN every week, meaning any prolonged labour dispute could shut down a transportation corridor used by millions of Canadians every year. Other rail services, like the Rocky Mountaineer, a popular Canadian rail-tour company, also use tracks operated by both CN and CPKC.
That being said, Canadian consumers would most likely feel the effects of any work stoppage through the impact it would have on shipping. Across the country, the rail industry is still responsible for transporting millions of tonnes of cargo every month.
Recent figures from Statistics Canada show Canadian railways carried 29.3 million tonnes in January, largely consisting of agricultural products, especially grains, potash, and oil.
It should be noted the prospect of a labour dispute will not be impacted by how Bill C-58, the federal government’s proposed legislation banning replacement workers, progresses through Parliament. While the rail industry is a federally regulated workplace, and therefore falls under the purview of C-58, the bill has an 18-month implementation period meaning, unless it’s amended, it will not come into effect prior to a potential rail strike.
Organized labour groups and the federal NDP have previously called for the implementation period to be shortened. The so-called anti-scab bill is currently in front of the House committee on social development and would still need to pass third reading before heading to the Senate.
For Monette, whether or not C-58 is amended, the use of replacement workers is likely out of the question for CN and CPKC, given the particular expertise needed for people working as conductors or rail engineers.
“You can’t just grab any random Joe off the street to operate a train,” he said. “It’s complicated and takes training. There’s a lot of safety and critical aspects to do the job.”