BCN-13Canadian Pacific Rail workers reach a labor deal, end strike

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Canadian Pacific Rail workers reach a labor deal, end strike

OTTAWA, May 31, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Canadian Pacific Rail workers ended a
strike Wednesday less than a day after more than 3,000 of them wallked off
the job, their union said.

The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) said in a statement it reached
a tentative agreement with the nation’s second largest railway to renew the
collective agreement, ending a strike that had started at 10:00 pm Tuesday
(0200 GMT Wednesday).

Full operations were scheduled to resume Thursday morning across Canada.

“We believe this is a fair contract that our members can feel good about
ratifying,” TCRC president Doug Finnson said.

Details of the agreement were withheld pending ratification, which is to
take place over the coming months.

The strike threatened to severely curtail or shut down Canadian Pacific’s
freight shipments, compounding delays at CP and its larger rival Canadian
National Railway caused by extreme weather over the winter.

Those delays especially hit miners, loggers and grain farmers trying to
get their wares to ports for shipping to overseas markets.

Despite the risks to the economy, with CP handling 40 percent of all rail
shipments in Canada, the government refused to force the train conductors and
engineers back to work, but sent federal mediators to help in the
negotiations.

This was the third strike at CP Rail since 2012, coming after the company
reached a tentative deal on Tuesday with its more than 300 signalling workers
who had also been poised to walk off the job.

BSS/AFP/HR/1018