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Several hundred Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. employees are on strike, after talks between a signal workers’ union and the company came to a grinding halt.
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More than 300 members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, System Council No. 11, went on strike starting Sunday. Calgary-based CPKC says it has a contingency plan to continue operations.
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“CPKC trains are operating,” the company said in an emailed statement. “Safe and efficient rail service continues across Canada.”
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Signal and communications workers install, test and maintain railway equipment across Canada, according to the union.
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Jason Sommer, a chair with the labour group, said the strike could slow CPKC’s operations due to increased stoppages.
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“We’re certainly going to cause a lot of pressure and annoyance to the company,” Sommer said. “We’re going to affect their bottom line.”
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But Chris Murray, an analyst with ATB Cormark Capital Markets, said he doesn’t see any material effect on operations, at least in the short term.
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“If it does go longer, then we have to reassess,” Murray said.
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While the union and the company are away from the bargaining table, both say they’re hopeful for a resolution.
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Sommer said the union wants compensation increases for its members, arguing that CPKC has fallen behind on pay compared to what other signal and communication workers make across the industry.
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He said the union’s signals workers at CPKC are paid as much as $4 less per hour than some industry counterparts, such as Canadian National Railway Co.
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CPKC, Sommer said, has offered “very little” financial improvements for the union’s workers, and the increase it has offered came with demands for concessions to scheduling changes.
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“(It would) give the company much more ability to unilaterally implement various work schedules at reduced compensation for on-call coverage,” Sommer said of the railroad’s demands. “That was obviously something that we couldn’t agree to.”
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In its statement, CPKC said the union’s “unreasonable, unrealistic demands” go far beyond the wage and benefit increases its other employees have received in recent years.
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It added that the union “repeatedly refused real, field-proven work scheduling solutions that address their primary publicly stated concerns.”
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The company also said the increases the union seeks would be more than double what it has provided to other Canadian collective bargaining units.
