Canadian railroad workers union mounts legal challenge to arbitrator's back-to-work order

TORONTO (AP) — The Canadian arbitrator appointed to resolve a messy railroad labor dispute to protect the North American economy has ordered employees at the country’s two major railroads back to work so both can resume operating.

The Teamsters union representing workers said Saturday that it will comply with the order and send its members back on the job, but it will also move forward with a legal challenge.

“This decision by the CIRB sets a dangerous precedent. It signals to Corporate Canada that large companies need only stop their operations for a few hours, inflict short-term economic pain, and the federal government will step in to break a union,” said Paul Boucher, President of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, which represents more than 9,000 engineers, conductors and dispatchers.

“The rights of Canadian workers have been significantly diminished today,” Boucher added.

The order should allow Canadian National trains to continue rolling and help Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. railroad get its operation running again.

Both railroads have said they would follow the Canada Industrial Relations Board’s orders. Canadian National trains started running again Friday morning but the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference threatened to go on strike there starting Monday morning. CPKC workers have been on strike since the lockout began early Thursday, and the railroad’s trains have remained idle.

READ MORE: Canadian union issues 72-hour strike warning to freight railroad hours after it resumes service

Union officials have said they would “work within the framework of the law” even as they challenged the constitutionality of the arbitration order, announced by the government Thursday afternoon to avert potentially disastrous consequences to the economy.

Businesses all across Canada and the United States said they would quickly face a crisis without rail service because they rely on freight railroads to deliver their raw materials and finished products. Without regular deliveries, many businesses would possibly have to cut production or even shut down.

Perrin Beatty, President and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said the union’s latest actions “will prolong the damage to our economy and jeopardize the wellbeing and livelihoods of Canadians, including union and non-union workers across multiple industries.”

Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon had announced the decision to force the parties into binding arbitration on Thursday afternoon, more than 16 hours after the lockout shut down the railroads, saying the economic risk was too great to allow them to continue. The government had declined to order arbitration two weeks ago. Mackinnon said he had hoped that negotiations between the companies and the union on a new contract would succeed. A spokesman for MacKinnon declined to comment Friday on the strike notice.

“This is not about disobeying the minister’s order. It’s about exercising our right,” Teamsters Canada President Francois Laporte said Friday in announcing the strike. “We will exercise our right within the legal framework.”

The negotiations that began last year are hung up on issues around the way workers are scheduled and contract rules designed to prevent fatigue. The railroads had proposed shifting away from the current system that pays workers based on the number of miles they travel, to a system based on the hours they work. The railroads said the switch would make it easier to provide predictable schedules. But the union resisted because it feared the proposed changes would erode hard-fought protections against fatigue and jeopardize safety.

Similar quality-of-life concerns about demanding schedules and the lack of paid sick time drove U.S. railroads to the brink of a strike two years ago before Congress and President Joe Biden intervened and forced workers to accept a deal.

In Canada, another issue at CN is the railroad’s intention to expand a system that allows it to temporarily relocate workers to other parts of its network when it’s short on employees in a certain region.

Regarding wages, the railroads said they both offered raises in line with other recent deals in the industry for what are already well-paying jobs. Canadian National has said its engineers make about $150,000 and conductors earn roughly $121,000 for working 160 days a year though some of their time off is spent stuck at hotels on the road between train trips while getting required rest. CPKC says its pay is comparable.

Nearly all of Canada’s freight handled by rail — worth more than $1 billion Canadian (US$730 million) a day and adding up to more than 375 million tons of freight last year — stopped Thursday along with rail shipments crossing the U.S. border. A number of smaller short-line freight railroads that handle local deliveries continued operating but were unable to hand off shipments to either of the major railroads while they were idle.

About 30,000 commuters in Canada were also affected because their trains use CPKC’s lines. CPKC and CN’s trains continued operating in the U.S. and Mexico during the lockout.

Billions of dollars of goods move between Canada and the U.S. via rail each month, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“There are a lot of goods and services shipped across borders,” Sean O’Brien, President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said at a rally in Calgary, Alberta, on Friday. “If this company chooses to continue its bad behavior then it is going to have an impact. … They’ve got a lot of decisions they need to make. And they need to make the most important decision: Reward these workers with what they’ve earned and also don’t try to diminish safety just so they need to feed their bottom lines.”