If an agreement isn’t reached, 3200 employees of CN Rail could be on strike by Tuesday.
According to the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), notice of intent to strike was served to CN on Friday night due to a lack of progress at the bargaining table.
They say the union hopes to reach a negotiated settlement that its members can ratify, and to move forward without a service disruption.
“Fatigue has been recognized by the Transportation Safety Board as a major safety problem in this industry. Too many railroaders are operating trains when they should be resting,” explained the president of the TCRC, Lyndon Isaak. “For the safety of all Canadians, we cannot allow CN to make it even harder for our members to get the rest they need.”
“CN is telling our members that they are facing tough times, but the reality is that they made over $3.8 billion in the third quarter of 2019. They should be ashamed to be pleading poverty,” added Lyndon Isaak. “This obsession with profits and shareholder return, at the expense of just about everything else, is exactly what is wrong with our economy.”
The union and the company have been in negotiations for seven months and have been working with federal mediators for the past five. In September, workers voted 99.2% in favour of strike action. The previous collective agreement expired on July 23, 2019.
The strike notice comes after CN Rail announced they would be laying off a reported 13 hundred people.