The workers who struck are members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and make up almost one-quarter of the company’s workforce. They include maintenance, clerical, and intermodal yard workers—those who transfer cargo between trucks and trains.

Maintenance workers voted 69 per cent in favor of the settlement, while the clerical and cargo workers approved the contract by an 81 per cent margin.

Describing the repercussions of the strike, the big-business daily Montreal Gazette said it had “crippled truck-to-train traffic at Canadian National Railway Co., triggered layoffs at crop producers, and caused widespread uncertainty for exporters.”

The company says the union action cut its operating profit by $35-40 million (C$1 = $0.76).

In an important display of solidarity, CAW members at some auto plants in southern Ontario refused to unload auto parts from trains, causing temporary shutdowns.

Some 400 intermodal truck drivers who are also members of the CAW respected the picket lines.

The union reports that for the first time in modern railway history, CN used replacement workers.

Workers went on strike February 20, rejecting a proposed agreement negotiated between the union and the owners of CN. The unionists opposed the new, harsher disciplinary system the bosses had imposed—including an automatic five-day suspension without pay as a minimum sanction. They were also fighting for improvements in pensions.

In the contract that was approved, the employer agreed to go back to the disciplinary system that was in place before 2001.

The company agreed to a 1.8 percent increase in the pension formula “whenever the pension improvement account is sufficiently funded,” according to the CAW web site. The workers will receive wage increases of 3 per cent per year over the three-year contract, as well as a $1,000 payment upon returning to work.

Al Kucher, a heavy duty equipment mechanic at CN, told the Militant outside a March 18 ratification meeting in New Westminster, British Columbia, “The grassroots guys voted with their hearts against the heavy-handed treatment we’d been getting. Now we will go back four or five years to the old [discipline] system. They were giving discipline for things they never gave it for before. Guys with 20 years who had never got discipline before were getting discipline.”

Pat Flatta, who has worked at CN for 22 years, said in a phone interview, “Overall, I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get more but we stayed out long enough to get what we wanted. We’re happy with the company’s reversal on the discipline policy. We’ve been congratulated by other unions for holding out for that.”

Joe Young is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1518 in Vancouver.  
 
 
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