Canada’s Teamsters are not conceding their labor battle with the country’s Class I railroads without a fight.
The union has filed four separate appeals with the country’s Federal Court of Appeal, challenging the referral and decision that sent 9,300 rail workers back to work without a new contract.
After Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) locked out the employees ahead of a potential strike in late August, the federal government stepped in to enforce binding arbitration between the railroads and the union.
The Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) levied the decision to get a third-party arbitrator involved in the contract talks, two days after Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon initially made the referral. The Teamsters’ appeals argue that workers’ charter rights were violated and that imposing arbitration strips them of their right to collective bargaining.
MacKinnon announced the move more than 16 hours after both railroads locked out the employees, which shut down operations at both companies and put the movement of cargo in peril.
The shutdown led to a significant increase in origin railyard dwell times, spiking by 200 percent on August 23 prior to MacKinnon’s announcement, according to data from supply chain visibility provider Project44.
Average rail transit times increased by 28 percent due to the strike, but have since returned to normal levels, the company said.
The union called MacKinnon’s move an abuse of power, and said it intended to challenge the CIRB’s decision all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
“These decisions, if left unchallenged, set a dangerous precedent where a single politician can bust a union at will. The right to collectively bargain is a constitutional guarantee,” said Paul Boucher, president of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, in a statement. “Without it, unions lose leverage to negotiate better wages and safer working conditions for all Canadians. We are confident that the law is on our side, and that workers will have their voices heard.”
CN was more favorable toward the decision in a statement, calling arbitration a “neutral process that is agnostic to outcome. It does not favor one party over another.”
When operations for both railways restarted Aug. 26, CPKC said it anticipated it will take several weeks for its network to fully recover from the work stoppage and “a period of time beyond that” for supply chains to stabilize.
As the struggle over Canada’s internal logistics landscape lingers on, the country’s chief shipbuilding association is calling on the federal government to enact a 100-percent tariff on vessels built in China.
The Canadian Marine Industries and Shipbuilding Association (CMISA) commended Canada’s recent decision to levy a 100 percent tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles, but said the ships present an “even greater strategic and ethical threat.”
“China’s shipbuilding industry operates under the doctrine of Civil-Military Fusion whereby commercial ship exports are subsidized to strengthen the country’s military capabilities,” a CMISA statement read. “The very shipyards that produce ferries and cargo vessels for the global market are also used to construct warships for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), fueling its rapid and aggressive naval expansion. As China’s navy continues to grow, it increasingly uses its fleet to challenge Canadian interests and those of our allies in regions extending even to our own Arctic waters.”
The association also sought a clear prohibition on any government entity from acquiring or leasing Chinese-built vessels.
The move would be a step further than allies in U.S. and Europe, which have both grown weary of China’s expanding shipbuilding capabilities. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) opened a probe into China’s maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors in April after unions claimed that they have created unfair competition and pricing advantages that damage U.S. commerce.
China’s Commerce Ministry said the investigation was “full of false accusations.”
The U.S. has already proposed other maritime tariffs on China, hitting the country with a 25 percent tariff on ship-to-shore cranes manufactured in the country.
However, the USTR has delayed its decision on implementing the tariff as three U.S. ports await the delivery of eight cranes.
The proposed tariffs are one of many expected to be levied by the Biden administration to protect U.S. manufacturers from what the president calls “unfair trade practices.” The tax appears to go beyond trade tensions, with numerous officials across government agencies identifying the cranes as a potential national security risk.
