This story first appeared on Trains.com.
Canadian National Railway announced that it has received a 72-hour strike notice from the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference. A strike against the railway company will begin at 10 a.m. ET on Monday.
CN ended the lockout of TCRC engineers and conductors at 6 p.m. Thursday after Canadian Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon announced he would order CN and CPKC to resume operations and refer the dispute between the railway and TCRC to binding arbitration. The strike notice came after the union announced early Friday morning that it would return to work at CN but maintain its picket lines at CPKC, which has yet to end its lockout pending an order from the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB).
Whether a strike will actually take place is still highly uncertain.
“The impact of this notice will depend on the timing of the CIRB,” CN said in its statement Friday afternoon. “It is in Canada’s national interest that the CIRB decides quickly, before further damage is done.” CN also said the strike notice “confirms that the Teamsters never took negotiations seriously and that they had no desire to make a deal.”
The CBC reports that Teamsters Canada President François Laporte said this morning in Calgary, Alberta, that the company’s demands allegedly violated the union’s collective agreement. “We believe in fair and equitable negotiations and that’s what we want: we want fair and equitable negotiations with the company.”
Laporte and other union officials attended a rally outside the CPKC headquarters.
This is a developing story.
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