CP Rail labour dispute leads to work stoppage

Regina CP Rail workers are now on the picket line after CP Rail and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference were unable to reach a new labour agreement before deadline.

"A timeline is difficult to say,” said Warren Zimmer, the local Teamsters chairman. “I mean, we remain hopeful that we're able to have some improvements, specifically to our pension plan, and various other working conditions as well."

The union supports around 450 employees in Saskatchewan.

“It's also workplace improvements that we'd like to see to make it a better place,” said Zimmer. “We worked tirelessly through the pandemic. We never stopped operating. We've always been here.”

Salem Woodrow, manager of media relations and community affairs at CP Rail, said the company was disappointed the two sides could not come to an agreement.

“We recognize that the Canadian economy is really in a fragile state and it requires a fully functioning rail transportation network to deliver the much needed goods within Canada and throughout the world,” she said. “So we are tremendously disappointed that we find ourselves in this position."

According to Zimmer, one of the main disagreements came from the pension plan.

"We would just like to see the increase in our pension plan,” he explained. “On top of that CP Rail has not even had to contribute to the pension plan for the past two years, just because of how well funded it currently is."

Woodrow defended CP’s current pension plan.

"The fact is that CP has one of the oldest and largest pension plans,” she said. “There are a number of companies who have pension plans and caps in place, and CP’s contributed $2.5 billion to the pension plan since 2009.”

Despite the work stoppage, both sides are still at the negotiating table and hope to come to an agreement.