Quick end to CP strike
A day-old strike at Canadian Pacific Railway screeched to an unexpected halt Monday with the company and its union agreeing to binding arbitration just hours before employees were to be legislated back to work.
Labour Minister Kellie Leitch was on the verge of introducing a bill to end the labour dispute when she suddenly emerged from the House of Commons to reveal the two sides had beaten her to it.
Le itch welcomed the sudden willingness by both sides to resume talks through a mediator — a development that had seemed impossible just hours earlier.
“I do believe there are still numerous issues on the table and I’m confident that the mediation and arbitration process will get them to the place where they need to be,” she said.
“Our intention is to get service back working at 100 per cent by tomorrow morning.”
The strike by 3,300 locomotive engineers and other CP train workers began Sunday.
Earlier Monday, as the House of Commons debated the merits of the back-towork bill, Leitch said the strike could have cost the Canadian economy more than $200 million in lost GDP every week.
Later Monday, the Teamsters Canada union announced on Twitter that the CP strike had ended.
“A mediator will be named,” said the tweet. “Details to come.”
CP chief executive Hunter Harrison said he would have preferred a negotiated settlement with the striking locomotive engineers and conductors, but acknowledged that “this is the right thing to do at this time.”
“This decision ensures both sides will get back to the table, and gets us back to moving Canada’s economy forward,” Harrison said.
Harrison has taken an aggressive stance on labour relations since he became CEO in 2012, cutting 4,500 jobs by the end of 2013 as he worked to cut costs and get the company’s operating ratio down to the mid-60s. (An operating ratio tracks a railway’s operating costs as a percentage of revenue. A lower number is better.)
It’s likely that Harrison will continue this aggressive approach as he works to double CP’s earnings per share by 2018.
Doug Fast, an engineer and strike captain for the Saskatoon union members, said he was glad to be back to work.
“No one likes to be out on strike. It would have been nice if we could have come to this without having to go on strike,” he said.
The biggest stumbling block in negations has been finding a work-life balance, he said.
Workers are on call 24 hours a day every day of the year, he said. On just two hours notice, they can be called for a shift lasting from one to three days, he said.
“The only schedule is we don’t have a schedule,” which makes it difficult to stay rested for work, he said.
Fast said he hopes the issues the union has raised are “addressed in a meaningful way.”
Earlier, Teamsters union president Douglas Finnson had said he was disappointed by news of a back-to-work bill, calling it “premature and unnecessary.”
He said the crucial issues of driver fatigue and working conditions were best settled through negotiations.