(CBC Manitoba posted the following story on its website on February 27.)
WINNIPEG — More than 130 engineers with Canadian National Railway are threatening to join striking Canadian Auto Workers.
CAW-represented maintenance workers have been walking the picket lines at CN since Feb. 20. CN has kept trains running by using managers to do the jobs of the striking workers.
Bruce Willows, spokesman for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, says managers have caused a derailment and at least one minor injury in CN’s rail yards in Winnipeg since in the past week.
“We simply can’t allow our people to work in an unsafe work environment. It would be irresponsible for us to do so. The company has an obligation under section 124 of the Canada Labour Code to provide a safe working environment. Certainly, from our perspective, the experience over the past week has indicated that they’re failing miserably in doing so,” he says.
“We want the skilled and trained and qualified people from the CAW back doing the maintenance, repair and inspection of our equipment. Our membership’s lives depend on it. The company’s put together a rag-tag band of supervisors who haven’t been performing this type of work in many years, and augmented that, in fact, with supervisors they’ve imported from the U.S.”
CN officials deny that American officials have been at work in Canada, but Willows says his union has proof.
Willows has sent a list of 32 complaints to his union’s national office and to Transport Canada. He says 130 engineers based in Winnipeg are on alert, ready to withdraw services immediately if they get the go-ahead from union headquarters.
About 1,300 of the striking CAW maintenance workers are based in Winnipeg.