(The following story by Fiona Anderson appeared on the Vancouver Sun website on May 25.)
VANCOUVER — The British Columbia Supreme Court has prohibited striking CP workers from stopping trucks entering and leaving the Canadian Pacific Railway Company’s intermodal yard at Pitt Meadows.
While picketers are allowed to picket and talk with drivers entering or exiting the yard, the right to picket in British Columbia — unlike some other jurisdictions in Canada — does not include the right to stop vehicles, B.C. Supreme Court Judge Carol Ross said.
From the evidence before her, including a 25-minute DVD, Ross said she was satisfied that “vehicles have been stopped, albeit temporarily.”
“The authorities . . . establish this is unlawful,” Ross said.
As a result, Ross ordered that the picketers be “restrained, enjoined and prohibited from physically obstructing, blocking, impeding or delaying any person or vehicle travelling to or from” CP’s intermodal facility at Pitt Meadows.
Ross refused to extend the injunction to other properties owned by CP in the province as there was no evidence of unlawful picketing activity at those locations.
Ross also found no evidence of intimidation or threats that would warrant including a prohibition against that type of activity in the injunction.
Lou Viani, a spokesman for the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference Maintenance of Way Employees Division, which represents CP’s 3,200 striking maintenance workers, said the union will appeal the decision.
The order preventing striking employees from stopping trucks to enable them to communicate about the strike “will have a very serious negative impact on the effectiveness of the [picket] line,” Viani said in a written statement.
“It goes without saying that the order will be obeyed, but at the same time we will be instructing our counsel to appeal the decision in an attempt to bring the practice in B.C. in line with other provinces on this very important charter and union-rights issues,” Viani added.
Courts in Edmonton and Calgary also granted CP injunctions regarding pickets at local intermodal yards on Thursday. CP won injunctions at other terminals across Canada last week.
CP spokesman Mark Seland said CP was pleased with the decisions of the courts and the company expected “a return to normal fluidity” within 24 hours at Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary. The backlog of containers at Pitt Meadows, which last week threatened to prevent further trains from unloading, should be cleared up shortly after that, Seland said.
The CP workers have been on strike since May 15 after being without a contract since Dec. 31. The main issue dividing the parties is wages, with the union seeking a 13 per cent increase over three years and CP offering 10 per cent.