The Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) on Wednesday evening threatened its employees to prevent them from coming to work for the next three days if negotiations for the next collective agreement continue to bog down.
A large number of Canadian business organizations then called on the federal government to prevent a possible work stoppage. CP, headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, warned that this option would cause deep economic disruption in Canada.
The company gave 72 hours notice Wednesday to the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) of its lockout plan for nearly 3,000 employees beginning Sunday.
It will be triggered if the company and the union do not reach an agreement on negotiations of the collective agreement or if it is not possible to resort to arbitration, according to a press release.
A work stoppage “would affect virtually every product in the Canadian supply chain, crippling the performance of Canada’s trade-dependent economy,” warns CP.
In particular, the company transported more than 30 million tonnes of grain during the year 2020-2021.
Despite daily talks with federal mediators, CP said the two sides “stay away from each other” after the union rejected its latest offer this week.
Negotiations have been ongoing since September and the two sides are at odds over 26 outstanding issues, including wages, benefits and pensions.
In early March, members of the CFTC union voted 96.7% in favor of a strike.
A strike or a management-initiated shutdown (lockout) would affect some 3,000 railway workers, including conductors, locomotive engineers, trainmen and yardmen.
Appeal to Ottawa to prevent a work stoppage
About 45 industry groups say in a statement that any disruption would hamper Canada’s freight capacity and have a profound effect on the wider economy, which is recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
They say the federal government must do everything in its power to get the union to agree to enter binding arbitration immediately, to settle this matter without a work stoppage.
Among the groups behind the request are the Retail Council of Canada, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters and the Business Council of Canada.
In recent months, freight transportation in Canada has been severely disrupted by record flooding in British Columbia. In particular, Canadian Pacific had to close its railway line for about a week.
At the end of 2021, it concluded an agreement with the American company Kansas City Southern (KCS) to create the first network linking Canada, the United States and Mexico, after a long battle against its competitor Canadian National (CN) .