CN Rail strike settled
Source: Canadian
Press
Published: December 2nd
2009
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OTTAWA — Canadian National Railway Co. and the Teamsters
union have reached a deal to end a strike by locomotive engineers
which began Saturday.
No details of Wednesday's agreement were immediately available.
Teamsters Canada president Daniel Shewchuk said the engineers will
get back to work as quickly as possible, but didn't provide a
timeline.
The agreement came after the federal government introduced
legislation Monday to end the strike, which was to have been debated
Wednesday evening.
Labour Minister Rona Ambrose credited the back-to-work bill — which
would have referred all outstanding issues to arbitration — for the
deal.
``Back-to-work legislation applied very real pressure on the
parties,'' she said.
CN Rail is the country's largest railway and the government cited
worries about the weak economy to justify the strike-ending
legislation.
``Continuing the strike for any further amount of time would have
had grave consequences for our economy,'' Ambrose said.
Managers have been running the trains since the walkout began.
The 1,700 engineers, members of the Teamsters Canadian Rail
Conference, have been without a contract for almost a year.
One of the main bones of contention between the two sides was hours
of work. The railway wanted to extend the number of kilometres an
engineer could cover in a month.
The union claimed this could cost jobs and leave some people working
seven days a week. The company denied that. |
