(Reuters circulated the following story by Jeffrey Jones on May 18.)
CALGARY — Striking track workers have disrupted operations at some Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. freight terminals, prompting the company to seek injunctions against picketers, officials on both sides said Thursday.
CP Rail, whose 3,200 track maintenance workers walked off the job on Wednesday in a dispute over wages and work-rule changes, won an injunction against strikers at a Winnipeg terminal.
It will seek financial damages for lost business at its facilities, railroad spokesman Mark Seland said.
Train traffic has not been hampered, but operations at intermodal terminals, where shipping containers are moved between trucks and trains, have been affected as truckers are blocked from leaving, Seland said.
“We’ve received some injunctions and are seeking others to control that behaviour,” he said. “And we’ll be proceeding to seek compensation for damages caused by those disruptions, so we’ll be in court on that as well.”
CP Rail, the country’s No. 2 railway, aims to keep grain, coal, fertilizer, lumber and other freight moving on schedule during the job action.
It brought in trained managers to replace members of the Rail Conference Maintenance of Way Employees Division of Teamsters Canada, who maintain tracks, bridges and structures.
Talks are at an impasse over the union’s position that its members should garner higher wage hikes than the three per cent agreed on by the railway’s other bargaining units because maintenance workers’ pay already lagged behind.
CP Rail has said it could agree on bigger increases, but only if the union makes concessions in other areas to boost productivity and generate savings.
The dispute looks far from a resolution.
Strikers were still disrupting intermodal traffic Thursday at major terminals in Vancouver and Toronto, said William Brehl, the Teamsters division’s president.
“Our guys are solid. We’re not budging. We’re Teamsters. All Teamster trucks are recognizing our picket line and supporting it,” Brehl said from the line at CP Rail’s Vancouver intermodal facility.
He said company officials had not contacted the union to restart talks to end the strike.
The union leader said on Wednesday that CP Rail had not returned phone calls, an assertion Seland disputed.
“We have not heard from, we have not seen representatives from the union since they walked away from the table in late April,” he said.
The only communications the railway has received were an e-mail query about strike protocol and a May 7 contract proposal containing a bigger wage demand, Seland said.
Canada’s government has said it will intervene if the strike caused serious economic damage.
Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn said in Ottawa on Wednesday that a government mediator was still talking with both sides separately, “but at a certain moment they will need to be together to try to find a solution,” he said.
CP Rail shares rose to a new high for a second day, jumping $1.31 to $77.13 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.