Lockouts

Toronto – Teamsters Canada union leaders are urging federal officials in Ottawa to stay out of the collective bargaining process and back railway workers’ right to strike. “The transportation industry’s most powerful chief executives have developed a way to sidestep union negotiations,” Francois Laporte, national president of Teamsters Canada, and Paul Boucher, president of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, wrote in an op-ed in Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper this week. “Here’s their playbook, as we see it: Make unreasonable demands, accuse unions of being unreasonable for refusing to accept them, instigate job action, lock workers out to disrupt supply chains, and use the resulting outcry to press Ottawa to impose binding arbitration. We believe this to be bad faith bargaining.