Canada has headed into an unprecedented lockout at its major rail companies – an action that could grind sectors of the economy to a halt amid complaints from workers over worsening job conditions.
Canadian National Rail (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) began lockouts of nearly 9,000 workers on Thursday morning after tense negotiations failed to produce a deal.
Now we’ve established that the majority of train users can WFH, there’s no excuse for not calling out entitled union behaviour. But Two Tier’s is rather keen on tugging his magnificent forelock to our country’s enemies, so….
Different animal Tim. These are freight companies, so it’s going to be big business that will suffer rather than Joe Public. I wonder how long CP/CN can withstand the pressure from their customers?
All very well and good. But how does the Canadian railway system compare to the absentee landlord model operated in the UK? In the UK the TOCs are just contractors (many of them ultimately foreign owned, including some that are state owner, not UK state obviously) given regional monopolies by the DfT for a set number of years. There is little incentive for them to improve anything, beyond meeting whatever basic requirements specified by the DfT, which already quite deliberately, allows staffing and service levels well below what is required to provide a resilient and reliable service.
” In the UK the TOCs are just contractors (many of them ultimately foreign owned, including some that are state owner, not UK state obviously) given regional monopolies by the DfT for a set number of years. There is little incentive for them to improve anything, beyond meeting whatever basic requirements specified by the DfT”
But our host tells us that selling everything to foreigners makes us richer………..
“ I wonder how long CP/CN can withstand the pressure from their customers?”
Or how long it takes their customers to find alternative solutions that turn out to be better than being held ransom by unions and don’t come back?
I like this as an indicator of the future that awaits leftist agitators under regimes which they have hitherto supported and believed to be their friends.
The Cannuck left were all in favour of Trudeau crushing the truckers, and sacking everyone who wouldn’t take his poison jabs, and calling anyone vaguely on the right a Nazi, and they didn’t even really notice when he invited an actual Nazi to address parliament.
Now suddenly – what?? He’s NOT their pal? Oh dear how sad never mind.
BinD, their trains are looooooong and road is not really an option, especially for heavy stuff during the (upcoming) ‘interesting’ Canadian winter.
An example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FytUHN_mxDg
I initially read that as “we’ve established that the majority of train drivers can WFH….” 😉
I suspect that the linked article is a redirection to a fake site. A genuine Guardian article would have included Trump, far right and climate change.
A better way:
Reagan / Air-Traffic Controllers
In the Canadian example, it’s not “just industry” that will be affected – it will fuck up the entire economy, and in a big way. Most previous governments would not have stood for it – we would’ve seen back-to-work legislation while the paarties continued bargaining, or possibly been directed to mediation by the Labour Minister. Trudeau welcomes this as a distraction from his own comical ineptitude, while not understanding that it just provides additional evidence of the same.
It’s the Grauniad, so of course they’ve got it wrong. The union is not complaining about worsening job conditions, they want changes to *increase* rest days. It is claiming that CanPac, which has an excellent (possibly the best in the industry) safety record, is “risking lives to make an extra buck” – so standard lefty lies.
“Seeking Alpha” has a couple of articles on the subject.
Canada is freight the rail companies are very bolshy about allowing any shared use on their lines. For urban areas they have to limit the size so rail crossings don’t block traffic for more than 15 mins
Addolff,
“ BinD, their trains are looooooong and road is not really an option, especially for heavy stuff during the (upcoming) ‘interesting’ Canadian winter.”
They don’t need to lose all of it, something like 10% should screw up the business when they’ve finished negotiating with the unions.