(Reuters circulated the following article on February 12.)
MONTREAL — Canadian National Railway Co. said on Sunday 2,800 striking conductors and yard-service workers at its operations in Canada demanded wage increases that were 40 percent higher than those agreed to under recent labor pacts at the company.
The United Transportation Union (UTU), which is at odds with its U.S.-based parent over the strike at Canada’s biggest railway that began on Saturday, asked for wage increases of 4.5 percent in the first two years of a three-year contract and 4 percent in the third, CN said.
That was 40 percent higher than the increases CN negotiated in recent collective agreements for a comparable three-year period, the Montreal-based company said.
“The UTU’s final offer on lump sum bonus payments – C$1,000 ($840) per year over the three-year period – was three times greater than the other recent agreements,” CN said.
“We are prepared to negotiate a fair and equitable settlement with the UTU in the same way we’ve done with our other unions. But such a settlement must be economically sustainable and maintain the company’s competitiveness in the transportation marketplace,” Hunter Harrison, president and chief executive of CN, said in a statement.
The union said its demands were not excessive and its members were upset with the way they were being treated by CN. UTU Canada has maintained that the strike is legal and a legitimate bargaining tool.
CN, which wants Canadian courts and regulatory agencies to declare the strike illegal, said its freight network was operating smoothly as it was using management personnel to fill striking workers’ jobs.
The strike, which could have an affect on key shipments of commodities, including grains, minerals, timber as well as industrial goods such as motor vehicles, does not include other unionized workers at CN or its extensive operations in the United States.
Meanwhile, UTU International, the parent of the Canadian union, said it did not authorize the strike at CN by UTU Canada members and called the walkout a “very serious and sad situation.”
UTU International said that under its constitution, which was ratified by Canadian and U.S. membership, a bargaining committee has to seek the assistance of the UTU International president before starting a strike.
UTU Canada leadership representing CN workers did not seek that permission, Paul Thompson, president of UTU International, said. That could leave the Canadian union members vulnerable to legal challenges and without assistance from UTU International, he added in a statement posted on UTU International’s Web site.
“Rather than having the assistance of the largest railroad union in North America – numbering some 125,000 active and retired members — and the substantial resources of the International on their side, our brothers and sisters in Canada have been put in a position of having to fend for themselves,” Thompson said.