THUNDER BAY – More than 100 railway workers are picketing in Thunder Bay after CN and Canadian Pacific Kansas City locked them out overnight.
Jon Strapac, local chair of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, said the mood on the picket line on Syndicate Ave. on Thursday – day one of the lockout – was enthusiastic.
But, the workers, consisting of engineers and conductors, would rather be on the job.
“Well, we don't want to be here,” Strapac said.
“We want to move traffic. You know, this is not an ideal situation for anybody. Nobody wins in this strike, we know that unfortunately. The company doesn't want to bargain.
“They're hoping the government steps in and forces us back to work and then gets binding arbitration, which again, nobody wins in that either.
“It'd be great to have a settlement between both companies and the union that we both feel we want.”
The last contract ended in January.
Strapac said one of the sticking points in coming to a new collective agreement has been the hours. Railway employees don’t have a set schedule and never know if and when they will be working.
“You have to understand that the railroad is a 24/7 operation, we don't shut down for weather . . . COVID, we don't shut down. You're on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This is our life.
“You get a call and two hours later you have to be at work. It used to be you're gone for a day and you can come back, but now with regulatory rest, some people are getting sent off to Ignace or they're away from home for 48 hours and the company won't pay them.”
Strapac said railway employees simply want a little more work-life balance.
“That's what we're fighting for . . . So we really want to see them going to modern times.
“Everybody here understands with the schedule of a railroad, nothing is exact,” he said.
“Families suffer in the sense of not having a schedule, but in the long run this is what we know that the job is and we would really like to have it more streamlined in a sense,” he said.
