Canadian Pacific employees walked off the job Tuesday evening
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) will resume normal operations his morning after the railway and employee unions reached tentative four-year agreements yesterday.
About 3,000 employees represented by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference took strike actions late Tuesday night after contract talks between the union and CP deteriorated.
Another group of employees, represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, also took strike action.
The news of the tentative agreements is good news for producers, who have faced a rail backlog and other legislative hurdles.
“With grain bins and elevators still full across the Prairies we are counting on both railways to work to full capacity to get our backlogged grain to export position,” Jeff Nielsen, president of Grain Growers of Canada, said in a statement yesterday. “With this positive news, and the recent passage of Bill C-49, grain farmers are excited about the opportunity that exists to have a rail transportation system that works for hardworking farm families and the rural communities they live in."
The challenge now, farmers say, will be trying to accommodate the railways’ times to ensure grain deliveries are made.
Everything runs “on the railroad schedule, it’s not the customer’s schedule, it’s not the shipper’s schedule and it’s not the farmer’s schedule,” Todd Lewis, president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, told Global News yesterday. “That’s got to change.”
Another Canadian industry praised the quick resolution of the CP strike.
The effects of a one-day strike are “manageable” by the country’s mining sector, Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada, said in a statement yesterday. And the federal government’s support in the negotiations protects “Canada’s reputation as a reliable exporter,” the statement said.