(The following article by Brent Jang was posted on the Globe and Mail website on February 25.)
TORONTO — Striking CN Rail employees have started to return to their posts after their union reached a tentative one-year agreement with management on the weekend, but a bitter rift over unresolved disputes threatens to upset the fragile truce.
Negotiators for Canadian National Railway Co. and the United Transportation Union agreed to a 3-per-cent wage increase for this year, and a $1,000 signing bonus, as long as UTU members ratify the pact. The previous three-year deal expired at the end of 2006.
The two sides are still far apart on working conditions, agreeing to disagree on contentious issues. Bargaining talks are slated to reconvene this fall. The new pact is designed to ensure labour peace until the end of this year, but major sticking points remain.
The deal, reached late Saturday, will avert the need for the federal government’s back-to-work legislation, introduced on Friday.
“If employees are going back to work, we will suspend our bill,” federal Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn said in an interview last night.
An internal memo issued by UTU negotiators John Armstrong and Robert Sharpe said: “We know this tentative memorandum of settlement is not the one that you had envisioned. But time and circumstance did not allow for us to address all of the approximately 150 outstanding issues/demands that were in the union’s last position paper dated Feb. 9, 2007, tabled with the company just prior to the strike.”
Despite such misgivings, the UTU is urging its members to get back to work and earn a paycheque.
A four-week ratification process will end March 26, when mail-in ballots will be counted.
CN management is clashing with the UTU over productivity measures. The Montreal-based railway sets daily standards, seeking to fill all available slots for train traffic by carefully assigning locomotives, crews and maintenance work to ensure shipments move on time. The UTU counters that employees are constantly under the gun, facing a stream of deadlines in an effort to meet CN chief executive officer Hunter Harrison’s efficiency drive as a “precision railroad.”
Also to be resolved are pension rules, disciplinary measures, how much time a worker is entitled to be off between shifts and how much rest is required when a train is away from an employee’s home base.
With freight backing up across the country, the return of CN workers will help relieve pressure on 600 railway managers, who have been filling in for 2,800 striking conductors and yard-service employees.
Mr. Blackburn said the economy is suffering widespread damage as a result of the strike that began Feb. 10. The minority Conservative government expected its back-to-work bill would have been backed by the Opposition Liberals.
Mr. Blackburn praised CN management and the union “for making the difficult compromises necessary” and urged all UTU members to return to work to get the freight moving at full speed again.
Many rail-dependent manufacturers, chemical producers, forestry firms, farming groups and miners had curtailed or halted production since UTU members walked off the job.
While there has been solidarity among employees in complaining about being overworked and underpaid, the UTU itself has been torn by a fight between UTU Canada and its U.S.-based head office.
Rex Beatty, a former UTU Canada chief negotiator, said Sunday that the one-year deal is virtually the same proposal that he rejected earlier this month on behalf of CN workers. “It’s disgusting and shameful,” he said.
Mr. Beatty said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union is successful this year in raiding UTU Canada, a move that would result in UTU international losing its Canadian unit.
But Frank Wilner, a spokesman for UTU headquarters, said it would be foolhardy for UTU Canada members to listen to Mr. Beatty’s criticisms of the one-year deal. Mr. Wilner countered that the negotiated settlement is much more attractive than leaving matters in the hands of a government-appointed arbitrator, who would need to deliver a “winner-take-all” decision either in favour of management or the union.
He noted that, for the one-year deal to be ratified, 50.1 per cent of UTU Canada members who cast ballots must vote in favour of the tentative pact. Technically, the “strike mandate” remains in place, pending the completion of the ratification process, Mr. Wilner said.
UTU members at CN earned an average of $75,000 in 2006, and 25 per cent of the members made more than $90,000 annually.
“I’m not looking for a fight, and I’m not trying to take anything away from you,” the Memphis-born Mr. Harrison said in an internal memo to workers on Feb. 9. “Nobody values railroaders more than I do. I’ve been one all my adult life.”