Teamsters call strike at CN Rail despite federal referral to relations board

The Teamsters union has served Canadian National Railway (CN) with a 72-hour strike notice, hours after saying it was taking down picket lines and workers would return to their jobs."Please find this letter as official notice to the company of our intention to withdraw the services of our combined membership of approximately 6,500 members," reads the notice sent to CN on Friday morning by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference.The notice says that the union does not believe any of the ongoing issues between the railway and the Teamsters to be "insurmountable" and that it remains open to negotiating with the company in order to prevent any "further work stoppage."The strike notice comes after months of contract talks between the Teamsters, CN, and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC).A statement from CN issued Friday afternoon said that while the railway remains focused on getting back up and running, "the Teamsters are focused on returning to the picket line and shutting down the economy, impacting people and jobs across the country."Speaking in Calgary, François Laporte, the president of Teamsters Canada, told CBC News the company's demands would have broken the union's collective agreement and that its priority is to ensure union members have "decent and reasonable working conditions.""We believe in fair and honest bargaining and that's what we want, we want a fair and honest bargaining with the company," he said. .Both companies locked out their 9,300 engineers, conductors and yard workers just after midnight Thursday after failing to reach deals with the union. CPKC's 3,500 workers went on strike at the same time.Federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon referred the dispute to the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to impose binding arbitration, under Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code.Now the CIRB will decide how best to settle negotiations and whether that requires binding arbitration. For the CIRB to impose binding arbitration, it must justify it as the only way to handle the dispute and that it is economically necessary for the country.According to CBC, CPKC said it was prepared to discuss the resumption of service at a meeting with the CIRB, but the union refused and said it intends to make submissions to challenge the constitutionality of MacKinnon's actions. The work stoppage at CPKC remains ongoing.Pressure from industry groups and provincial governments to resolve the conflict has been mounting for weeks.The companies haul a combined $1 billion in goods each day, according to the Railway Association of Canada. Industries affected by the work stoppage include agriculture, mining, energy, retail, automaking and construction.The impasse affects tens of thousands of commuters in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, whose rail lines run on CPKC-owned tracks. Without traffic controllers to dispatch them, passenger trains cannot run on those rails.U.S. railways also have had to turn away Canada-bound shipments. Shippers south of the border also rely on Canada's two main railways, whose tracks run to the Gulf of Mexico and, in CPKC's case, to Mexican ports.Rail consultant Greg Gormick told Western Standard inadequate attention to railroad issues was finally costing the government and the public."The politicians and most of the public never even notice the trains until they stop running or they get held up at a grade crossing by a long one," Gormick said."Just one more sign of how our national and provincial transportation policies and the lopsided funding programs are hopelessly screwed up -- and have been for decades."Chickens always come home to roost."

Teamsters call strike at CN Rail despite federal referral to relations board

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