Liberals end railway lockout with binding arbitration

OTTAWA – After a day of disruption, the Liberal government ended a massive rail strike by sending the parties to binding arbitration.

Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon said Thursday that while they respect the bargaining process the negotiations between CPKC rail and CN rail and the Teamsters Rail Conference had reached an impasse.

He said the country’s rail lines could not be stalled any longer.

“These collective bargaining negotiations belong to these parties, but their effects and the impacts of the current impasse are being borne by all Canadians,” he said at a late press conference.

“Millions of Canadians rely on our railways every day, workers, farmers, ranchers, commuters, small businesses, miners, chemists, scientists, the list goes on and the impacts, cannot be understated. They extend to every corner of this country,” he said.

MacKinnon is ordering the Canada Industrial Relations Board to extend the current collective agreements, order a return to work and send the remaining issues to binding arbitration.

The board is an independent agency, but MacKinnon said he is hopeful the agency will act quickly and get trains running again. He said he expected it would be a matter of days before things resumed.

His predecessor in the job issued a similar order to end a strike with WestJet mechanics, but the mechanics in that strike initially refused to turn to work and held out until they reached a deal with the airline.

MacKinnon said he is confident that won’t happen in this case.

He said the Liberals respect collective bargaining, but the two sides were simply too far apart.

“We gave negotiations every possible opportunity to succeed right up until midday today.”

The two rail giants locked out workers first thing Thursday morning, bringing the country’s freight rail network to a halt. The job action also stalled some commuter rail services in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.

The two companies moved an average of $1 billion in trade per day across Canada and into the United States. Business groups warned of severe financial hardships if the strike had continued, with grain farmers saying the strike would cost farmers $43 million per day.

The strike risked drinking water supplies for cities because chlorine moves by rail and it risked leading to back-ups at major ports. There were calls from the U.S. and Canadian chambers of commerce for an end to the strike and pressure from premiers across the country.

The move to use binding arbitration drew swift condemnation from NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. He argued it sent a message to employers that treating your workers poorly was a strategy worth pursuing.

“The Liberals’ actions are cowardly, anti-worker and proof that they will always cave to corporate greed, and Canadians will always pay for it,” he said in a statement. “There will be no end to lockouts now. Every employer knows they can get exactly what they want from Justin Trudeau by refusing to negotiate with their workers in good faith.”

National Post

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