(Reuters circulated the following article on February 20.)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Canadian National Railway Co. asked labor regulators on Monday to declare a strike by 2,800 workers illegal, while customers of Canadian National, the country’s largest railway, complained of service disruptions.
Canadian Labor Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn called the situation untenable, and said the minority Conservative government would look at “every option” to end the dispute. He did not say if the government was considering asking opposition parties to help legislate an end to the strike.
“We cannot see the situation going very far like this,” Blackburn said.
A Canadian National spokesman said the railroad would prefer a negotiated settlement.
Canadian National says the strike, which began on Feb 10, is illegal because it was not authorized by the United Transportation Union’s international headquarters in the United States, which is the workers’ official bargaining agent with CN Rail.
But the UTU’s Canadian negotiators, who have been at odds with the union’s international leaders, say the strike was properly authorized under Canadian labor law. The union’s contract with CN expired at the end of 2006.
Rex Beatty, the UTU’s Canadian general chairman, has said the striking freight conductors and switching yard workers will return to their jobs if the Canada Industrial Relations Board declares the strike illegal. The board continued hearings in Montreal on Monday on the legality of the strike.
The workers, who are demanding higher wages and work rule changes, have not been receiving strike pay because of the intra-union dispute.
Canadian National says it is maintaining service as best it can using management crews, but a chorus of shippers is complaining about slow service and an inability to get needed freight cars.
Canadian National said on Monday it has resolved service issues that forced Ford Motor Co. of Canada (F.N: Quote) to idle some production at its St. Thomas, Ontario, assembly plant, and is deploying resources to resolve service problems elsewhere.
Details on exact service levels remain sketchy, but various shipping groups have estimated CN is operating at 50 percent capacity.
Canadian Pacific Railway (CP.TO: Quote), Canada’s second largest railway, said the CN strike has not yet had a dramatic impact on its operations except at several terminals at the Port of Vancouver, where CP declared force majeure last week.
The UTU’s international president has accused the union’s Canadian negotiators of using the strike to split the union so that they can push Canadian locals to join the rival Teamsters union, which already represents CN’s locomotive engineers.
Beatty and the Teamsters Canadian Rail Council both deny the allegations.
The strike does not involve Canadian National’s workers in the United states, and UTU crews have continued to work on commuter trains in Toronto and Montreal.