CN Rail strike settled as two sides reach agreement
Published: December 2nd 2009
Source: Canadian Press

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.

 

www.teamstersrail.ca