CP Rail conductors and locomotive engineers authorize strike amid grain backlog
Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. could see thousands of workers walk off the job as soon as April 21 after the union representing conductors and locomotive engineers authorized strike action on Friday.
The union’s decision comes as Canada’s major railways work to alleviate a grain backlog that has infuriated many producers in Western Canada.
The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) representing CP workers said Friday that members voted 94.2 per cent in favour of authorizing strike action. The union says its approximately 3,000 members could go on strike as early as 12:01 a.m. on April 21.
“Despite our best efforts to negotiate in good faith, we have come to a point where Teamsters are prepared to go on strike for the third time in six years to obtain a fair and reasonable contract renewal,” TCRC president Doug Finnson said in a statement released Friday.
Teamsters spokesman Christopher Monette added in an interview that among the key outstanding issues in negotiations are long hours and worker fatigue, something he said is a public safety concern. As well, the union says CP’s increasing profits have come at the cost of cuts, layoffs and closures.
“CP is a profitable company making billions of dollars, but so far in the negotiations, they’ve asked for cuts and concessions in all areas of the collective agreement, which is unfair and unacceptable to Teamsters members,” Monette said.
CP did not respond to a request for comment.
Both CP and rival CN have been facing government scrutiny and a backlash from customers over significant delays that have caused a backlog in grain shipments.
Ian Boxall, vice-president of the Agricultural Producers’ Association of Saskatchewan, said the railways are already struggling to meet the delivery targets set out in light of the backlog and that any further disruptions — such as a union strike — could be “a huge disaster.”
“Both railroads only delivered 69 per cent of cars ordered last week. They are not overachieving when it comes to getting rid of the backlog,” he said Friday.
“Any hiccup in the rail system now is a huge disaster for Western Canada.”
In a letter addressed to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, CP chief executive Keith Creel said stronger volumes in several areas, including potash, frac sand, fertilizer and intermodal, combined with unusually extreme cold weather, impacted the railway’s service. He also pointed some of the blame at rival CN, saying that “service challenges on a Canadian competitor have contributed to an unexpected shift of business to CP as well.”
Monette would not comment about the service disruptions.
This is not the first time CP and its union have experienced strained relations. Under the tenure of the leadership of the late Hunter Harrison, who was CP’s CEO for four-and-a-half years, the company saw its workforce slashed by 40 per cent in the name of railway efficiency. Creel, who took over as chief executive after Harrison departed for CSX in January 2017, had vowed to rebuild the relationship between the company and its employees.
“Over the last four years, we’ve had some feathers that have been ruffled,” Creel said during a conference call with analysts in April last year. “Part of my focus has been to reconnect with employees and also to reconnect with our … labour unions to ensure that things we didn’t get right in the past we can get right as we go forward.”
The previous collective agreement with CP expired at the end of 2017. Negotiations have been ongoing since November, and Monette said the two parties have scheduled further negotiations for the week of April 16 in Calgary.
“There’s still a lot that can happen between now and April 21,” Monette said. “If (Creel) wants to improve relations, he definitely has a solid opportunity between now and the strike deadline to do that.”
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