Canada government may order rail strikers back to work

30 November 2009 17:47  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--Canada’s Labour Ministry was preparing legislation on Monday that would order 1,700 striking locomotive engineers back to work.

The Canadian National Railway (CN) engineers, members of Teamsters Canada, walked off the job on 27 November when federally mediated contract talks broke down in a dispute over wages.

CN, Canada’s largest railway, used management personnel as engineers to keep trains running over the weekend, the company said.

Rail is critical to the transportation needs of the chemical and fertilizer industries in Canada and all of North America.

The Labour Ministry said its legislation would order an end to the three-day strike immediately and send all contract issues to binding arbitration.

The union wants to send wage increase issues to binding arbitration upon a negotiated resolution of other issues, including the maximum distance the engineers can travel in one month.

CN wants everything to go to arbitration. It offered a 1.5% wage increase and wanted to increase the travel distance maximum by 800 km (500 miles) to 6,900 km. The union said the higher maximum would make some of its members redundant and lead to layoffs.

CN and the Teamster engineers have been in negotiations for 14 months.

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By: Frank Zaworski
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