Teamsters Canada Rail Conference

Fearing that a prolonged disruption of train travel during the peak travel season could cause irreparable damage to Via Rail and ultimately cost workers their jobs, the company and union brought their labour dispute to an unexpectedly swift end.

After a mere 48 hours on the picket line, locomotive engineers and yardmasters returned to work Sunday after Via Rail Canada Inc. and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference agreed to impose a new collective agreement through a process of binding arbitration.

“The strike may have lasted for weeks or months,” said Daniel Shewchuk, president of the TCRC, the union representing the 343 striking workers.

Locomotive engineers and yardmasters have been without a contract since Dec. 31, 2006, and no progress was being made in talks. Mr. Shewchuk said binding arbitration is not the ideal way to resolve a labour dispute but it is the “best course of action” given the circumstances.

Malcolm Andrews, senior manager of corporate communications at Via Rail, offered up a similar analysis, saying: “Obviously, everyone would have preferred a 100-per-cent negotiated contract.”

He added the “fact that this is high season, a particularly busy time of year, amplified the need to find a solution and find it quickly.”

The labour dispute had already led to the temporary layoff of 2,500 Via employees. It also generated a raft of bad publicity for the rail passenger carrier and an unexpected bonanza for Via competitors like Greyhound, Coach Canada, Air Canada and Porter Airlines.

The strike came at a bad time for Via, which had a record 4.6 million passengers in 2008 but has been feeling the effects of the recession. Business peaks during the summer tourist season, when there are about 12,500 passengers daily, as opposed to about 10,000 daily in non-peak periods. Via runs 503 passenger trains weekly.

Mr. Andrews said there was no political pressure to end the dispute, but there was a lot of public pressure: “The union heard it. We heard it. The public was fed up so we had to find a way of resolving our differences that didn't make Canadians suffer the consequences.”

Negotiators for VIA and the TCRC met for the better part of the last week, both before and after the strike deadline of Friday noon.

Talks broke down late Friday but the mediator brought the two parties together again Saturday and they spent the day hashing out the issues they would send to binding arbitration.

Both sides refused to provide details except to say their differences revolve primarily around non-monetary issues such as scheduling and training.

In the coming weeks, arbitrator Michel Piché of the Canadian Railway Office of Arbitration and Dispute Resolution will hear submissions from both sides on the outstanding issues. He will then impose a settlement that will be binding on both the union and the company. The CROA usually deals with grievances from individuals but, in this instance, it stepped in to deal with broader contract issues. Its officials were not available to comment Sunday.

Mr. Andrews said customers whose trips were disrupted from the time the strike began will be compensated, but the company has not yet settled on how. “We are currently looking at some innovative and tangible ways that we can say sorry to our customers,” he said.

The strike was the first since at the passenger rail company since 1995, when conductors were off the job for nine days.

The move to binding arbitration is not at all rare for the rail industry, said Alan Levy, a professor of labour relations and dispute resolution at Brandon University in Manitoba. “It's usually mostly used in the public sector – municipalities, hospitals, those kinds of organizations,” Prof. Levy said, adding it occurs most often in cases where essential services may be affected. Though rail service may not be as essential as functioning hospitals, for example, Prof. Levy said there is a culture within the industry that sees it as a viable way to resolve labour conflicts.

“Typically the railroad folks have endorsed both mediation and arbitration,” he said.

Via's last strike, which affected both freight and passenger service, lasted only days before Ottawa legislated the employees back to work and ruled the matter would be resolved through arbitration.

Prof. Levy, who has worked as an arbitrator and a mediator in labour conflicts across Canada, said even though the current resolution seems quick, it's important to keep in mind that the union has been without a collective agreement since 2006. “They've been going at this for months and months,” he said. “We don't hear about any of that. We only hear about it when there is the impact of work stoppage.”

The arbitration is a sign that both parties recognize a work stoppage is too damaging in this case.

“With Via Rail, in the middle of the summer, moving people becomes a really important factor for the success of the tourist industry in most provinces,” Prof. Levy said. “They realized they had hit the brick wall, but they didn't want to harm the business. That's quite responsible labour relations on the part of the parties here. It's very different from what's happening with the Toronto strike, for example.”

Arbitration looks much like a court case. Both parties are typically represented by a lawyer, and tell their side of the story before a panel at the tribunal.

“Typically what happens is, the arbitrator plays King Solomon,” Prof. Levy said, “taking a little bit from here and a little bit from there, to reach an agreement.”

The swiftness with which striking Via employees returned to work also stands in stark contrast to what has taken place in strike-weary cities along the busiest passenger train corridor.

In Windsor, a three-month civic strike just ended, and Toronto has had to endure a continuing municipal workers strike, and Ottawa commuters are still getting over a lengthy bus strike.

About 85 per cent of Via Rail's passengers travel the Quebec City-Windsor corridor. Federal Labour Minister Rona Ambrose said in statement that she was pleased the dispute had ended quickly: “This agreement will help Canadian families, many of whom depend on Via Rail service, and the national economy at this time of year when tourism is at its peak.”

With a report from Susan Krashinsky