Editorial: Feds show heavy hand in CP strike

Labour relations in Canada took a step backwards in late May, as federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt tabled back-to-work legislation to end a walkout by 4,800 Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive engineers and conductors that began on May 23 as a protest against management’s plans to slash pension costs.

Raitt’s Bill C-39 will send management of Calgary-based Canadian Pacific and representatives of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union to binding arbitration, allowing for CP’s trains to start rolling again by June 1. The bill forces the two sides to work under their current agreement until a new agreement is imposed within 90 days of the federal government appointing an arbitrator.

While Raitt tabled the legislation on May 28, she in fact announced she intended to do so less than 12 hours after the strike got underway.

The union’s chief negotiator Doug Finnson told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that “collective bargaining in this country is under attack, certainly,” though the union has vowed to comply with the law.

Ironically, with pensions being one of the union’s biggest issues, two of CP’s largest shareholders are pension funds: the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and the Canada Pension Plan.

The short-term benefits of Raitt’s move are clear, and it’s been estimated by federal Industry Minister Christian Paradis that the strike was costing the Canadian economy somewhere between $30 million and $80 million a day.

The Mining Association of Canada expressed its “grave concern” regarding the “significant economic impact” that the CP rail strike would have on mining communities that depend on rail to either transport fuel in, or transport products and by-products from operations.

The MAC estimates that the Canadian mining industry accounts for over 50% of the freight revenues of Canada’s rail system yearly. Overall, in 2010, the mining industry contributed $36 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product, employed 308,000 workers and paid $8.4 billion in taxes and royalties to provincial and federal governments.

The MAC had urged the Canadian government to take immediate action to resolve the labour dispute, stating that “in this time of post-recession economic recovery, a threat to the stability of the natural resource sector is a threat to the stability of a stalwart of the Canadian economy.”

However, the obvious concern is that the increasingly quick and frequent intrusion of the federal government in the country’s strikes and lockouts is dramatically lowering any incentive for employers and union representatives to bargain in good faith and work out a collective agreement on their own.

The Conservative Party-led federal government has intruded in five labour disputes in the last 12 months, each time justifying its intervention by playing up the vital role of the industrial sector in question and the fragility of Canada’s larger economic recovery.

Labour disputes recently brought to an end by federal legislation include the lockout of Canada Post employees after 11 days of rolling strikes, and the Air Canada strike.

Peggy Nash, the opposition New Democratic Party finance critic and a former union negotiator, told the CBC that the government announcing it is prepared to intervene makes resolving a strike through negotiations much more difficult. “If I’m the employer, I’m thinking it takes a lot more pressure off of me to not have to negotiate a settlement,” she said.

At presstime, Bill C-39 — after having been rammed through the lower house in a 14-hour marathon session — has stalled in the Conservative-dominated Senate, prompting Raitt to somewhat sheepishly ask the Teamsters and CP Rail to “voluntarily return to work” within 12 hours, until Liberal Party senators are satisfied that witnesses have had time to appear and have their say on the legislation.

Miners aren’t the only ones anxious to see the trains rolling again. Richard Phillips, executive director of the Grain Growers of Canada, said that “both union and management at CP forget that it is farmers’ money that helps pay their wages, and yet it is farmers that suffer financially when they can’t negotiate settlements in good faith.”

He said it is a “big worry off everyone’s mind, because this is a crucial time for farmers across Canada. Many farmers are just finishing seeding and are in the midst of hauling last year’s crop that will help pay our fertilizer and chemical bills. So we are very happy the House of Commons got the job done last night.”