Striking CN worker hit by truck

A Canadian National Railway employee suffered minor injuries after being hit by a pickup truck on a Saskatoon picket line hours after the railway union began a nationwide strike.

It was not immediately clear what precipitated the incident. A spokesman for the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference said the employee is contemplating going to the police after ending up on the hood of the truck.

“It’s unacceptable that our members are being hit by pickup trucks on the picket line … We encourage all Canadians to show the same respect for striking workers as they would for anybody else,” spokesman Christopher Monette said.

Saskatoon police officers were called to the incident but the suspect was gone when they arrived, and it does not appear that an official report had been filed as of Wednesday afternoon, according to police spokeswoman Julie Clark.

More than 3,000 CN conductors, trainspersons and yard workers hit the picket line at midnight on Tuesday, three weeks after their union voted 99.2 per cent in favour of strike action following a breakdown in talks.

A long line of tractor-trailers and other trucks snaked up the road leading to CN’S Chappell Yard on Wednesday afternoon, their progress slowed by a small group of picketing workers walking back and forth.

One truck driver whose rig was near the front of the line said he had been waiting to get into the rail yard for about an hour; a picketer said they are letting trucks enter and leave the yards every few minutes. Asked about the incident with the truck, the picketer said there have been “quite a few.”

There was some delight on the line when a woman waring a United Food and Commercial Workers bib showed up to distribute cups of hot soup, an apparent act of solidarity from one union to another.

Within hours of the strike being called, Saskatchewan agricultural groups and the provincial government were calling on Ottawa to take “immediate action” — presumably by recalling parliament to pass back-to-work legislation and end the strike.

“It can’t go very long. It really can’t,” Saskatchewan Agriculture Minister Dave Marit told reporters in Regina on Tuesday.

“I mean, as I said, we’re coming off one of our biggest harvests ever, with a fall that we’ve never seen before. This is a time when farmers are selling their product and moving it,” he said.

“We also have to really be concerned about our country’s reputation and delivering product to other countries. It’s been at stake before and it could be at risk again.”

The federal government has in the past used back-to-work legislation, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it was not in the cards during the brief Canadian Pacific Ltd. railway strike in May 2018.

“Quite frankly, we have companies that have gotten used to the fact that in certain industries, the government in the past was very quick to legislate against unions … We are not going to do that,” Trudeau told reporters at the time.

Asked about provincial politicians calling for Ottawa to intervene, Monette said “everybody’s entitled to their opinion,” before emphasizing that CN workers are striking over unresolved safety issues.

Nine union members, including three members of the striking CN bargaining unit, have died in railway accidents over the past 24 months, and issues such as rest periods for workers need to be resolved, Monette said.

While negotiations with the railway company are ongoing, Monette said there has been no substantive progress in about a week.

CN representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.