The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference has filed appeals with a federal court challenging the decisions that led to binding arbitration being imposed on locked out and striking workers at CN and CPKC.
Four separate appeals were filed late Thursday contesting the legality of a directive by Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) ending a work stoppage by 9.300 railway workers.
“These decisions, if left unchallenged, set a dangerous precedent where a single politician can bust a union at will,” said Paul Boucher, President, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference. “The right to collectively bargain is a constitutional guarantee.
“Without it, unions lose leverage to negotiate better wages and safer working conditions for all Canadians. We are confident that the law is on our side, and that workers will have their voices heard.”
Freight traffic began slowly returning to normal this past Monday following the CIRB decision announced the previous Saturday. For weeks, a wide range of industry groups had been urging the government to intervene to quickly halt an unprecedented simultaneous work stoppage on both Canadian major railways that had disrupted the transportation of an estimated $1 billion of commodities and consumer goods daily – notably sharply impacting cargo shipments at the ports of Vancouver, Montreal, Halifax and Prince Rupert.
(Teamsters union photo of locked out workers in Edmonton)
