The imminent threat of a rail strike in Canada, has led to ocean freight carriers blanking and diverting sailings on services from Asia to the Canadian West Coast.
The potential for industrial action moved a step nearer recently after a bout of talks between the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union (TCRC), the Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) union and the Canadian National Railway (CN) were abandoned less than halfway through.
On the 1st May, it was confirmed that around 9,000 workers from the TCRC and CPKC unions had voted in favour of a walkout and, after a 21-day cooling off period, they were originally set to strike from 22 May.
The Canadian government subsequently referred the matter to the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) on the 10th May, and under Canadian labour law, a strike cannot start until the board make a decision. That decision has not yet come, but the recent breakdown in talks have made the strike action more likely.
As a result, carriers providing Canada’ West Coast services have already started to make arrangements for vessels to omit, blank or swap calls for the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert this month. At this stage, ports on the Eastern coast have not seen been omitted, but will be affected should a strike go ahead.
The Canadian railways are critical for the movement of goods in and out of certain regions in the USA, including the Midwest, Northwest and Northeast. Therefore, a Canadian rail strike action will have a detrimental impact on some US services too.
As ever, the team at Killick Martin are monitoring the situation closely.
