(The following column by Neil Waugh appeared on the Edmonton Sun website on April 13.)
EDMONTON — Short hours after the latest contract ratification vote by Canadian National Railways conductors, CEO E. Hunter Harrison took pen to paper and explained to all his employees “the impacts upon all of us.”
But these impacts may not necessarily hurt the fellow the folks on the strikers’ runningtrades.com website have taken to calling “E-Dot”. The CN boss, who calls Burr Ridge, Illinois his home, just got another $100,000 boost in base salary on top of the $16.3 million in pay, perks, bonuses and share options he officially took home as boss of the outfit he describes as “the best railroad in perhaps the world.”
This salary windfall comes despite Harrison’s admission on March 29 that “we expect a tough first quarter.” He gave the stockies a heads-up that diluted earnings will “fall 5 to 10% below” last year’s figures.
Blame the “severe weather”. And landslides.
“We then had a 15-day strike by 2,800 members of the United Transportation Union,” Harrison’s press release added.
This was despite ludicrous statements at the time on the CN website that service levels were being maintained with managers in the cabooses.
That was until industrial shipper groups bombarded federal Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn with angry letters warning of plant shutdowns because they hadn’t been getting cars for days.
Harrison said he has “purposely waited” to avoid the perception “this was an attempt to influence the ratification vote.”
It clearly didn’t. United Transportation Union members pounded the tentative deal their executive negotiated 402 to 1,553.
On Tuesday, UTU brass informed CN labour relations that the strike that was suspended in February will continue and picketing will resume “at rotating and selected locations across Canada,” including at Edmonton’s Walker Yard, where CN is one of the city’s top private sector employers.
Harrison said he wrote the letter “to put the facts on the table.” He tried to speculate whether the standoff was about “power, money, contracts, harassment, intimidation and/or lunch periods.”
He forgot the Cleveland, Ohio-based UTU, which fired the Canadian union reps during the strike then appeared to tag up with CN brass, and tried to get the walkout declared illegal before the federal labour relations board.
On March 30 CN’s UTU members received an “open letter” from the Teamsters Canadian Rail Conference revealing that “as a result of your support” it has filed an application with the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to take them over.
The note talked about a “formidable alliance” and thanked them for “choosing the Teamsters.”
An editorial on runningtrades.com called the vote “an expression of a significant majority of members that their needs were not being met.”
Yup, it’s a complicated issue.
Next Harrison started talking tough, vowing to respond “in a number of ways” including “deploying management replacements, locking employees out, shutting down the railroad or making changes to UTU work rules.”
Harrison is clearly crying wolf, because he tried most of this last time with disastrous results. But there’s more where that came from – courtesy of the Stephen Harper Conservatives who Harrison is now counting on to get his trains running again.
“We predict this,” he warned the railroaders. “If our operations are disrupted, our customers will demand government intervention.”
Yesterday the Western Canadian Wheat Growers sent a letter to Blackburn calling for back-to-work legislation and lamenting that “farmers suffer real financial loss” when rail service is disrupted.
The sulphur shippers said the strike will affect “jobs, the economy, consumers and the environment.”
It’s only a matter of time.
Now Harrison is facing a mini shareholders revolt at his annual general meeting on April 24.
Ethical Funds Inc. has a motion on the agenda to tie Harrison’s compensation to CN’s safety record. It specifically noted “several high-profile derailments” including the “environmentally destructive spill at Lake Wabamun.”
Will E-Dot get a pay cut? Stay tuned.