Concern and frustration grow as CPKC-CN labour dispute continues – National
A national association of grain producers has estimated that the railway labor dispute Farm closures are costing farmers $40 million to $50 million a day. One city councilor says the shutdown has disrupted residents’ daily lives.
“We’re going to have to talk to our banks and our creditors and say, ‘Hey, you know what I thought I could do? I can’t do it anymore,’” Grain Growers of Canada president Andre Harpe told Global News.
“It’s not a pleasant experience for anyone,” said Ahmed Yousef, a city councillor in Maple Ridge, B.C.
Concern and frustration continue to grow as Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) trains are not running and with the Teamsters on the other national railroad, Canadian Nationalready to strike on Monday.
Labour Minister Steve MacKinnon had already said he would impose final and binding arbitration to end the dispute and “ensure industrial peace.” The Canada Industrial Relations Board, a mediation body, could make its decision as early as Saturday.
But the union representing all rail workers, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), said it was studying all options and the picket lines would remain in place.
Harpe said the current shutdown is “particularly bad” for the agricultural sector because most farmers have started harvesting.
Get the latest national news
For news that impacts Canada and the world, sign up to receive breaking news alerts directly when it happens.
He said many farmers have contracts to sell their grain as soon as they can – and “generally we don’t have enough storage space, we don’t plan on storing our crops,” he said, speaking from Alberta.
“Basically, our income is cut off until the Teamsters actually get back to work and the railroads are operating at full capacity.”
Further west, Maple Ridge, B.C., city councillor Ahmed Yousef said the West Coast Express commuter train uses CPKC tracks and is therefore not running. He says that has disrupted residents who work outside the city.
Maple Ridge is part of the Greater Vancouver area.
“We have seen a significant increase in traffic congestion on the roads,” he said.
“Our community has been underserved for, I would say, a little over a decade now,” he said, adding that he hopes the situation proves they need more services.
Eric Kam, an economics professor at Metropolitan University of Toronto, said about 32,000 people are moving to Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.
He also said on the Roy Green show that farmers will not be able to get 75% of their fertilizer.
“We’re going to see a kind of consumer hoarding, and people are going to start going out and buying whatever they can find, at whatever prices they can find,” Kam said.
In reference to the 13-day 2023 British Columbia port strike, which took place at the Port of Vancouver estimated cost of $800 million per day — for a total of $10 billion — Kam suggested that a lengthy rail shutdown could cost Canada up to $3 billion in GDP.
It also damages Canada’s reputation, he added.
“This could be one of the pieces of evidence that Trump needs to cut back on trade with Canada.”
Barry Eidlin, an associate professor of sociology at McGill University, said a number of long-term converging trends led to the Canada-wide conflict.
The first, he told Global News, is stagnant wages, eroding benefits and diminishing job security that, in turn, have been “crystallized” by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The idea that these workers are being hailed as essential (during the pandemic) but then treated as disposable has really angered people,” he said.
A tighter labor market after the pandemic has given workers greater bargaining power, Eidlin said.
“As these strikes started to multiply, there was a contagion effect: workers looked at what was happening and said, ‘Oh, if they can do this, then maybe we can do it too.'”
Eidlin, speaking generally about collective bargaining in recent years, said another factor was “increased expectations.”
“One of the things we’ve seen in a lot of these strikes is that they’re the result of members rejecting contracts that were negotiated by the union leadership and sending the bargaining committee back to the table.”
But forcing the parties back to the negotiating table may “reduce the employer’s incentive to reach an agreement.”
“When you force an end to negotiations through binding arbitration or back-to-work legislation, you short-circuit the collective bargaining process.”
— with material from Caryn Lieberman, Uday Rana, Amy Judd, Alissa Thibault and The Canadian Press
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
