(Reuters circulated the following on December 1, 2009.)
OTTAWA/VANCOUVER — Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO) (CNI.N) offered a potential olive branch on Tuesday to striking Canadian locomotive engineers, who are angry about a change in the amount of time they have to work each month.
Canada’s biggest railway said it would agree to binding arbitration on wage and benefit issues and roll back its demand for a higher cap on the number of miles the engineers must drive each month.
The offer to end the strike that started Saturday is conditional on the union withdrawing unspecified work demands from the bargaining table.
“This is a good faith effort to reach a settlement and to end the strike,” CN spokesman Mark Hallman said.
The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, which represents the striking train engineers, said despite the company’s statement it has not actually received the offer, so it cannot comment on the proposals.
“We’re 100 feet from the CN headquarters and we haven’t seen anything,” President Dan Shewchuck said.
The workers walked off the job on Saturday after CN unilaterally imposed a 1.5 percent wage increase and raised the monthly mileage cap to 4,300 miles (6,900 km) from 3,800 (6,100 km) after 14 months of negotiation failed to produce a new contract.
CN has said the 3,800-mile limit was set in an era of steam locomotives, and a higher limit would improve productivity. The union says the higher limit would spell more time away from home for its engineers and cost jobs.
The dispute does not involve CN’s engineers in the United States who work under different contracts.
MOVEMENT IN OTTAWA
The Canadian government’s move to legislate a quick end to the strike got a boost earlier on Tuesday when a senior Liberal source said the party would likely back a bill that would end the strike.
The Conservative government holds only a minority of seats in the House of Commons and needs the support of at least one opposition party to pass legislation that would put the whole contract to binding arbitration.
“We’re not going to let the Canadian economy be damaged by the strike,” said the Liberal source, asking not to be identified.
The government, worried that the strike at Canada’s largest railroad could torpedo the country’s fragile economic recovery, stepped into the fray on Monday. An effort to fast-track the legislation could push it through Parliament in the next few days.
Shippers of goods such as grains, coal and lumber reported mild disruptions so far, but warned that problems would grow the longer workers stayed on the picket line and managers man the locomotives.
CN has about 225 managers capable of filling in for the 1,700 locomotive engineers that are on strike, said Bob Ballantyne, president of the Canadian Industrial Transportation Association, a shippers’ group, who said he met with CN management on Monday.
“I think CN would be very hard-pressed to maintain any comparable level of service after more than a few days,” Ballantyne told Reuters.
CN has declined to discuss its contingency plans, saying they are confidential.
Miner Teck Resources Ltd (TCKb.TO) said the strike has caused some congestion on the railway line shared by CN and rival Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd (CP.TO), which moves most of Teck’s coal.
“To ease the congestion, we have sent two shipments eastbound instead of to the (British Columbia) ports,” a Teck spokesman said.
Canadian Pacific has not said what impact the CN dispute is having on its operations.
CN’s shares ended up C$1, or 1.8 percent, at C$56.30 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Tuesday.