The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 68/No. 11           March 22, 2004  
 
 
5,000 strike Canadian National Railway
 
BY PATRICIA O’BEIRNE  
TORONTO, Ontario—Some 5,000 rail workers walked off the job at Canadian National Railway Co. locations across Canada at midnight February 19 to win improvements in pensions and stop company attacks on job security and working hours. The strikers, who make up almost one in four of the rail company’s workforce, are members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW). They include locomotive maintenance workers, container yard workers, and clerical staff. Several days earlier, workers in CAW Local 100 had voted by a margin of 63 percent against a proposed agreement worked out between union officials and the Canadian National Railway (CN) bosses. The agreement included a 3 percent wage increase for each year of the three-year contract. Workers cite the demand for improved pensions as a key issue, partly because many are close to retirement. The union is also demanding wage increases, extended health and vision care, and an end to recently introduced disciplinary practices. The CAW has called on CN to increase the company’s contribution to the formula for determining pensions. Such a raise would add about Can$120 (Can$1=US$.75) to the monthly pension of a retired worker with 35 years’ seniority. The union last forced the company to boost its contribution six years ago, from a level where it had been frozen for three decades.CN is Canada’s largest rail company and the biggest hauler of timber products in North America, moving more than 4 million boxcars of freight annually. Its rail network stretches from Canada south to the Gulf of Mexico.

The bosses have used managers and some scabs to move freight. The union fact sheet Railfax said March 4 that “soon after the start of the strike, CN tried another tactic,” making 400 owner-operator truck drivers “act like trains. CN has forced them to perform long-haul deliveries across thousands of miles, instead of the local and regional short hauls that they were hired to do. CN has also tried to bargain individual deals with these members for such long-haul trips.” The CAW has gone to court to obtain an injunction against this practice. Bill Mowat, a Local 100 shop steward, discussed the issues in dispute with Militant reporters. “CN wants to be able to bring in 10-12 hour shifts and assign days off as decided by the company,” he said.

Mowat criticized the offer voted down before the strike. “The company offered no pension increase and only a 3 percent wage increase,” he said. “There used to be a demerit system for discipline. Now, the company has imposed a new, harsher system. There is an automatic five-day suspension without pay as a minimum.”

Louis Têtu, picket captain at the CN Montreal container yard, said, “The average age of the workforce is 50. The last real wave of hiring was in 1979. The company donates money to charity to look good, but instead they should give work boots to unemployed youth and put them to work. I’ve never had the chance to work side-by-side with a young worker.”

Although CN officials deny that the strike is hurting their bottom line, the lack of rail freight transport is having an impact on some major customers. A March 4 Reuters dispatch from Montreal reported that container traffic at CN had dropped 26 percent in the first week of the strike compared to the previous week. The company admits that its container traffic has been hit hard, but says that total traffic is down only 3 percent.

Union solidarity has provoked squeals by bosses in southern Ontario’s auto industry, which is one of the world’s largest.

“CN Rail strike hurts auto makers,” read a headline in the February 26 Toronto Star. It reported Ford officials as saying that CAW members had “refused to unload parts from CN trains at its assembly plant in St. Thomas and other employees would not load finished products into rail cars at its engine operation in Windsor.” Ford sent 1,200 St. Thomas workers home that afternoon. DaimlerChrysler has also reported disruption to vehicle deliveries.

The following day, workers again refused to handle parts from rail cars, which crippled output on one shift at two Ford assembly plants in Oakville and St. Thomas. The company sent 3,700 workers home early. In Oshawa, where General Motors (GM) has an assembly plant, GM has taken steps to use municipal property, including the airport, to store train-bound vehicles. Autoworkers at the GM plant in Windsor, members of CAW Local 200, have refused to accept or load CN Rail since the strike began. CAW officials said that they are working with the auto giants to find alternatives to CN. The rail company is “not operating as usual,” said union president Buzz Hargrove. “We expect the auto companies to find alternative sources of transportation.”

Workers told the Militant that they had received messages of solidarity, including from a Teamsters local. A United Transportation Union local in Alberta has called upon its members to make donations to the strike fund, they reported.

On March 8 CN representatives broke off contract talks with the union. “The terms of the agreement that we reached with CAW on January 23 remain on the table,” said company spokesman Mark Hallman.

Christian Cornejo and Yannick Duguay in Montreal contributed to this article.  
 
 
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