PV Manitoba Bureau
When Canadian National Railway Co. (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. (CPKC) moved to lock out 9,300 railway workers, it escalated months of tense negotiations since the expiry of three major contracts in December 2023. Members of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) had approved strike action months prior, as bargaining over workplace safety, proper rest periods and salaried versus waged pay came to a head. When CPKC served notice of the lock out on August 18, TCRC President Paul Boucher responded swiftly: “We’re serving strike notice to defend the rights and safety of our members.”
The federal government risked a serious legal challenge with its unconstitutional back to work order of August 22 – less than a day after the lockout began – which flouts workers’ right to strike and bargain collectively. TCRC appealed the order, with Boucher stating that without the right to bargain collectively, “unions lose leverage to negotiate better wages and safer working conditions for all Canadians.”
Ottawa squashes labour rights, in service of corporate profit
In fact, Ottawa’s overreach not only threaten thousands of workers – it also weighs in behind two majority US-owned corporations, who are more concerned with the fluidity of cross-border trade than the safety or livelihood of those who facilitate their profits.
In a statement of support for the Teamsters, Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan spoke unsparingly: “By granting CN and CPKC their wish for binding arbitration, the federal government is basically rewarding a foreign-owned cartel for its bad behaviour. In the end, there’s only one thing that we in the Canadian labour movement can agree with the CN and CPKC executives on: railroad workers provide a vital service.”
McGowan also took aim at the very issue of privatization itself. “It [rail service] is too vital a service to be left in the hands of two price-gouging foreign monopoly companies. With that in mind, instead of helping American executives to screw Canadian workers, what I think the federal government should really do is consider ending our rail system’s disastrous experiment with vulture capitalism and re-nationalize our railroads.”
Alongside a chorus of indignation from organized labour, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh weighed in on X. “The Liberal govt’s decision to undermine 9,300 Canadian rail workers with a binding arbitration sends a message to big corporations like CN & CPKC: Being a bad boss pays off,” he posted. “Justin Trudeau’s actions are cowardly, anti-worker, and proof that he will always cave to corporate greed.”
For Singh, this is simply good politics. When President Biden passed legislation to break a 100,000-strong rail workers’ strike in 2022, it cost his government its reputation as a friend and ally to labour – and while this is hardly anyone’s perception of Trudeau, it’s essential to image of the NDP.
Kinew supports back to work order
In Manitoba, however, Premier Wab Kinew broke with the mainstream of his party to affirm his support for the federal order. “We’re going deeper into harvest season for producers here in Manitoba,” he said, pitting agriculture against the rail and transportation sector in a cheaply populist appeal.
“There’s still a lack of clarity for the producer who’s wondering what’s going on, for the worker in terms of what’s going to happen to them,” Kinew told attendees at a community event in Lorette. Contributing to this confusion, Kinew expressed his disappointment at the lockout, and then claimed to have personally reached out to federal ministers in support of their decision to force binding arbitration.
Farmers union stands with labour
Meanwhile, the National Farmers Union made it clear that farmers mustn’t be used as a bargaining chip by the railways, whose attempts to cut costs have hurt farmers and farm workers, too.
As Manitoba workers and their allies gathered on picket lines, facing down the largest railway lockout in Canadian history, Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon boasted that the trains would be running within days.
Kinew’s careerist rhetoric must be condemned, and his cabinet must pick sides – with TCRC members and the entire labour movement, or with the Liberal Party and its unconstitutional attack on the rights of workers.
However hard Kinew tries, he simply can’t please both.
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