Railcars and locomotives sit idle at the CPKC railyard in Calgary on Aug. 22.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Every hour, the nationwide lockout of railway workers inflicted greater harm on Canada’s already weak economy. Every hour the need grew for the federal government to act.
And so Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon intervened Thursday afternoon to send the dispute between the Teamsters union and the Canadian National Rail (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) companies to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board, with a directive for binding arbitration.
There is both a legal and a political question of whether he intervened too quickly. But most Canadians will be enormously relieved that this work stoppage may end, including Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. (More on that in a moment.)
Even if the railway workers are back on the job within a couple of days, this has been an incredibly damaging lockout. More than 9,000 workers are affected, much of the cross-border trade with the United States is at a standstill, more than a billion dollars’ worth of goods a day is not being shipped and Canada’s reputation as an attractive place to do business has suffered another major hit.
Federal labour board orders thousands of rail workers back to work, imposes binding arbitration
Mr. MacKinnon’s decision is a win for the rail companies, which had been seeking binding arbitration and now appear to have it. The Teamsters will probably take the government to court over the decision. Mr. MacKinnon does have the power under Section 107 of the Canadian Labour Code to refer the dispute to the board. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the right to strike is constitutionally protected, within limits.
So the government must believe the board and the courts will agree that the economic damage of the strike overrode the constitutional rights of the workers to bargain collectively, even though the workers had been off the job less than 24 hours. We’ll see.
Ottawa’s move to end the rail strike carries legal risks
Canada appears to be establishing a dangerous pattern of enduring major strikes that paralyze one important sector of the national infrastructure or other, followed by intervention by the federal government.
Seamus O’Regan, Mr. MacKinnon’s predecessor as labour minister, invoked Section 107 to help end disputes involving Vancouver port workers last year and mechanics at WestJet this year.
For anyone who believes in the rights of unionized workers to bargain collectively, these are unwelcome precedents.
It’s also a political black mark for the Liberals, who champion collective bargaining but repeatedly short-circuit the process. And it contributes to the impression that they don’t know how to run the country.
You would think Mr. Poilievre would be saying exactly that at the top of his lungs. But the Conservative Leader has been conspicuously silent in recent days. There is a reason for that.
Conservatives traditionally have limited patience for strikes that put the larger economy at risk. Stephen Harper’s government ended one rail dispute with back-to-work legislation and threatened to do the same with another.
But Mr. Poilievre has been courting the union worker. “I don’t blame the workers who are voting for strikes right now,” he said last year.
“Conservatives are 100 per cent on side with workers, union and non-union, who are fighting for pay hikes.” He even voted for government legislation that banned the use of replacement workers during strikes.
If the government were to be forced to convene an emergency session of Parliament and introduce back-to-work legislation to end this rail strike, he would face a difficult decision.
Mr. Poilievre surely could not support a job action that does so much damage to the Canadian economy. But neither, politically, can he criticize workers for trying to win the best possible contract.
For now, he is just keeping his head down and, no doubt, hoping this unpleasantness soon passes.
Rail lockout affected tens of thousands of passengers on commuter rail lines in three cities
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, on the other hand, will be happy with the outcome, at least politically. He stoutly opposed any efforts to force the workers into binding arbitration and back to work. Now he will be able to lambaste the Liberal government, without jeopardizing the supply-and-confidence agreement between the two parties.
High interest rates and high inflation fuel labour unrest. Labour shortages across all sectors of the economy add more fuel. We should expect more disruptions in the weeks and months to come.
Everyone in Mr. MacKinnon’s department should get some sleep. Because the Air Canada pilots could be off the job in less than a month.