9,300 employees locked out: Latest updates on shutdown of Canada's 2 largest railways
CTV
In a first for Canada, freight traffic on its two largest railways has simultaneously ground to a halt, threatening to upend supply chains trying to move forward from pandemic-related disruptions and a port strike last year.
In a first for Canada, freight traffic on its two largest railways has simultaneously ground to a halt, threatening to upend supply chains trying to move forward from pandemic-related disruptions and a port strike last year.
In the culmination of months of increasingly bitter negotiations, Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. locked out 9,300 engineers, conductors and yard workers after the parties disagreed on a new contract before the midnight deadline.
The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference has begun posting pictures to social media of workers from Halifax to Vancouver setting up picket lines.
The impasse also affects tens of thousands of commuters in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, whose lines run on CPKC-owned tracks. Passenger trains cannot run on those rails without the locked-out traffic controllers to dispatch them.
"The rail shutdown at CN and CPKC is already costing workers, transit users and businesses across the country, and we cannot afford to let things get worse," Ontario Premier Doug Ford posted on X on Thursday morning.
GO Transit warned Thursday that its service "may be busier than usual."
The regional transit service for southern Ontario's Golden Horseshoe region said rail service was suspended at Hamilton GO Centre and on the Milton line, which cuts through Mississauga to Toronto's downtown Union Station.
