(The following article by Allan Swift was posted on the Montreal Gazette website on february 24.)
MONTREAL — Ford of Canada plants told 1,450 workers to go home yesterday because of the strike by Canadian National Railway workers.
Spokesperson Lauren More said 1,200 day-shift workers at a car assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ont., were sent home, as well as 250 workers on one assembly line at an engine plant in Windsor.
More said the strike interfered with components arriving by train.
“We’re assessing the feasibility of temporarily using other modes of transportation, and we have moved to truck shipments where feasible,” More said.
GM Canada spokesperson Stew Low did not confirm Canadian Auto Workers statements that GM had also diverted shipments to trucks but said “a lot of scrambling has gone on behind the scenes in order to keep vehicles moving to our customers.
“There’s a limited capacity in each (transport) sector, you can only divert so much,” Low said.
GM Canada employs trains to carry most of its new vehicles from a truck and two car plants in Oshawa, Ont., while rail carries only 10 per cent of the parts coming to the plants.
The CAW claims there are train delays across the country and that the company cannot carry on for long using non-union staff. The most vulnerable area for CN appears to be intermodal shipping yards, rather than bulk shipping.
“CN is hurting because there are delays, mostly on trucks coming into its intermodal terminals,” CAW spokesperson Abe Rosner said yesterday.
He added that engineers have filed reports with Transport Canada about air systems not properly connected on trains, “and the people connecting the air systems are the people replacing our (union) members.”
“Auto companies have transferred a big part of their shipments away from CN to truck, so whether there are delays there or not, it certainly means CN has lost business on that front.”
Domtar Inc. spokesperson William George said the forest company began to order trucks for some of its products before the strike by the 5,000 workers began on Friday.
“It really is the intermodal that’s being affected by the strike, the boxcar operations are not,” George said.
A spokesperson for Hudson’s Bay Co. said its rail shipments go by CP Rail, while Home Depot Canada said it has not been affected so far by the CN strike. The same goes for Aluminerie Lauralco Inc., a major Quebec aluminum refinery and CN customer.
CN spokesperson Mark Hallman agreed there were some delays yesterday.
Also yesterday, the Canadian Wheat Board, the world’s largest single seller of wheat and barley, said the strike was resulting in a “significant slowdown” of grain shipments.
The board requested 2,400 railway cars from CN for use this week and was told it could only have 1,300, said Louise Waldman, a spokesperson for the Winnipeg-based wheat marketer.