Paul Viera of The Wall Street Journal reports that Canada’s government has declined to intervene in labor conflict between railway unions and the country’s two Class A railroads that threatens to stem cross-border trade and upend North American supply chains. Viera writes:
Canada’s two main railroads locked out over 9,000 employees Thursday after they were unable to reach new labor deals with a Teamsters union, the start of a work stoppage that threatens to stanch hundreds of millions of dollars in daily cross-border trade and upend North American supply chains.
The simultaneous moves by Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City sent the country’s businesses and policymakers scrambling to limit the fallout, as they warned of serious harm to the world’s 10th-largest economy unless the railroads and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference clinched new agreements. The companies had set a deadline of 12:01 a.m. Eastern time Thursday. […]
“You will have to start slowing down production pretty quickly if railcars aren’t being picked up or delivered,” Sloan said. […]
The U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics estimates that, in 2023, rail accounted for about 16%, or $114 billion, of the freight that moved between the U.S. and Canada. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce said a simultaneous labor stoppage would affect the flow of about $730 million in goods a day, and reduce access to materials needed to build cars and homes, and provide heating for households.
The U.S. Agriculture Department warned that imports of Canadian grains and oilseeds “would be heavily impacted” by a simultaneous railroad labor stoppage. The USDA estimates that in the first half of this year, Canadian agriculture producers shipped about $40 million a day of goods by rail to the U.S. […]
“The impacts of two Class 1 railways striking at once will have even worse, unprecedented ramifications,” the councils said in a joint statement.
Read more here.
