CPKC and CN Plan Lockouts If No Agreement, Or Binding Arbitration, Is Accepted By Teamsters Canada Before August 22nd

On Friday, Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railroad (CPKC) announced that it plans to issue notices to the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) Train and Engine (T&E) division and Rail Traffic Controller division of its plan to lock out employees at 00:01 ET on August 22nd if union leadership and the company are unable to come to a negotiated settlement or agree to binding interest arbitration.

CPKC says it remains committed to continuing good faith negotiation throughout.

The decision to issue a lockout notice comes after the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) on Friday issued its decision determining that no services need to be maintained during a railway strike or lockout in order to protect Canadian public health and safety. CIRB also ordered a 13-day extension of the cooling-off period which ends on August 22.

CPKC said it was providing this public notice to mitigate uncertainty and give its customers and supply chains proper time to plan for a safe and orderly shutdown of railway operations. As part of those preparations, CPKC will issue an embargo for all toxic by inhalation (TIH) dangerous goods traffic to allow this traffic to safely exit the rail network prior to a work stoppage. Other embargoes will be issued during the cooling-off period, as necessary.

In a similar statement on Friday, Canadian National Railway (CN) said: “Unless there is immediate and meaningful progress at the negotiating table or binding arbitration, CN will have no choice but to begin a phased and progressive shutdown of its network, starting with embargoes of hazardous goods, which would culminate in a lockout at 00:01 Eastern Time on August 22nd.”