Commentary

The Strike of Running Trades Workers at CN Rail

On February 10 2,800 members of the United Transportation Union (UTU), representing conductors, and yard service employees at CN Rail, went on strike for better wages and working conditions. One of the main concerns of the striking workers in this round of negotiations was a demand by CN Rail for a reduction in rest time for on-train employees between trips.

During the past several years CN Rail has had the worst safety record of any major North American railway. A recent Transport Canada audit of CN indicated that the company has been systematically cutting back on track and equipment maintenance in order to enhance its profit margin. The result has been an increasing number of major derailments and the deaths of several train crews. The demand by CN Rail to reduce the amount of rest and sleep time for its train crews can be seen as yet more disregard for the safety of train crews and of the Canadian public in the pursuit of maximum profits.

The striking CN workers immediately found themselves up against not only one of the biggest railway companies in the world, but also the Canadian state and their own top trade union leaders. The international president of the UTU, Paul Thompson, immediately declared the strike “illegal” because it had not received his authorization. CN Rail then applied to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to have the strike declared illegal. The CIRB heard the case on February 20 and ruled that the strike was completely legal under Canadian law.

In response to the CIRB ruling, CN Rail immediately demanded that Parliament pass immediate back-to-work legislation, citing extensive damage to the Canadian economy. This claim was made despite Hunter Harrison’s continuing claims that freight was moving normally without the striking workers. For his part, UTU international president Thompson removed all of the elected Canadian representatives on the union bargaining committee, replacing them with appointees. The elected negotiators were removed from their offices and their cell phones were cancelled, effectively depriving the strike of its main leadership.

In response to these moves by CN Rail and the UTU international president, some of the local leadership called on their members to return to work in order to prevent back-to-work legislation and to continue the fight through other means. Ironically, CN Rail initially refused to allow the workers to return to work. At the same time the UTU international president and his newly-appointed Canadian representatives, who had earlier declared the strike to be illegal, now demanded that workers “respect the picket line” and remain on strike. Both the union and management apparently preferred that the state be used to crush the workers’ struggle and impose a collective agreement on them.

Due to intense pressure from the media and various corporate interests, CN Rail was forced to backtrack and announced that it would not prevent any striking worker from returning to work. With most of the workers in Western Canada following their elected local leadership and returning to the job, the rationale for back-to-work legislation was removed. Still citing the “impending legislation”, the appointed UTU negotiators signed a one-year tentative agreement identical to that rejected by the elected committee just prior to the strike and containing wages and signing bonuses similar to those agreed to earlier by other groups of railway workers. In other words they signed an agreement essentially the same as any agreement that would have been imposed by a government-appointed arbitrator if back-to-work legislation had been passed.

This strike demonstrates how difficult it is becoming to distinguish between the capitalists, the state and the top trade union leaders. In this case, all three colluded to defeat the struggle of the workers. Some have concluded from this that the problem is with this particular trade union. However, even if the running trades workers’ own union had not betrayed them, they still would have faced the power of the state and the union would have been powerless to do anything about it, as many other groups of workers have discovered over the past few years.

The underlying problem is that, on the basis of the Liberal-Labour alliance which was established in the 1940s, the trade unions have been incorporated as part of the state apparatus and charged with the duty of preserving labour peace and protecting the capitalist system. During an earlier period the trade unions could pretend that they were opposed to the interests of capital to some degree, but that period no longer exists. Today, the monopoly capitalists are demanding that the entire society line up to defend their profits in their contention with other monopolies and the trade unions have lost all of their room to maneouvre. Caught between the interests of the capitalists and the interests of the workers, the trade union movement has entered a period of general crisis from which it is not likely to emerge.

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