Rail Workers Push Back on Binding Arbitration, Union Gives 72-Hour Strike Notice to CN

MacKinnon has also asked the board to order the railways to resume operations under the terms of the existing collective agreements until new deals are enacted.
Teamsters Canada national president Francois Laporte spoke out against the call for binding arbitration during an Aug. 23 news conference from the picket lines at the CPKC head office in Calgary.
“As far as we are concerned, this is not acceptable,” Laporte said. “The best way to have a contract is at the bargaining table. We don’t believe to let a third party decide what’s going to be our working condition. This strike continues.”
O’Brien called the lockouts by both rail companies “a disgrace.”
Both CN and CPKC said they were “disappointed” by the union’s decision to initiate strike action.
CPKC said the Teamsters’ refusal to discuss “any resumption of service” would affect the company’s “ability to resume serving the Canadian economy.”
“Canadians must be assured that their government will not allow them to suffer when parties do not fill their responsibility to them at the bargaining table, especially when worker and community safety is at stake,” he said.
The railway systems operated by the two companies haul around $1 billion in goods per day, according to the Railway Association of Canada. The CPKC shutdown has also disrupted the travel routes of more than 30,000 commuters in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
The union says the companies have failed to meet its demands on rest periods and scheduling, as well as ending a scheme that it says forces relocation to remote locations for several months to fill labour shortages. CN says the union has been dismissing its “serious offers” of better pay and improved rest and schedules, and CPKC similarly says its efforts to bargain in “good faith” with the union have been in vain.