Ottawa Prepares to Order End to CN Strike
Source: CBC News
Posted: 11/30/09 3:17PM
Filed Under: Canada
Labour Minister Rona Ambrose is preparing legislation to order 1,700 locomotive engineers at Canada's biggest railway back to work.
A government release Monday says legislation could be introduced if CN and the Teamsters union representing the engineers are unable to negotiate a settlement.
It says a strike threatens the country's fragile economic recovery, observing that the ports of Halifax and Prince Rupert rely entirely on CN for train service, while the company handles half of the rail shipments through Vancouver and 30 per cent of the service at Montreal.
The legislation would order an end to the three-day strike immediately and send all the 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. But the company says the two sides have been unable to resolve those other issues in 14 months of talks.
CN wants everything to go to arbitration. It has offered a 1.5 per cent wage increase and wants to increase the travel distance maximum by 800 kilometres to 6,900 kilometres. The union says the higher maximum would make some of its members redundant and lead to layoffs.
The company used managers to keep trains running over the weekend.
With files from The Canadian Press
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