OTTAWA, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO) said on Thursday it would impose new work rules on 2,700 train engineers and other workers beginning next week if it is unable to reach a new labor deal with their union.

The Teamsters Rail Conference, which represents CN’s train conductors, yard employees and traffic coordinators, says it is opposed to the deal recommended by a conciliator and endorsed by the railway.

CN is asking the union to accept a three-year status quo plan as the basis for a new collective agreement.

Conciliator Michael Bendel has recommended a deal that includes wage and benefit improvements comparable with those granted to other CN employees and a deferral of contentious issues such as crew scheduling.

The union rejects the status quo because there are problems with the current agreement, as evidenced by the number of grievances, said Teamsters spokesman Bryan Boechler ahead of mediated talks Thursday afternoon.

“After six months of extensive bargaining, we are now at a critical juncture,” CN Chief Executive Claude Mongeau wrote in a letter to the unionized staff on Wednesday and disclosed a day later.

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Lambton OPP are investigating an incident on the picket line outside Clean Harbors Tuesday night that resulted in a man going to hospital with minor injuries.

“Shortly before midnight it is alleged that a transport trucks that was leaving Clean Harbors was moving along Telfer Road, quite slowly,” said OPP Const. John Reurink.

“For some reason, or at some point, a pedestrian picketer actually found himself in front of the transport, or near the corner of the transport, and ultimately ended up on the ground.

“It is alleged there was contact between the truck and picketer, and the picketer was taken to hospital with what would be described as minimal to no injuries.”

A strike involving about 80 drivers, operators, heavy equipment operators, lab workers and mechanics represented by Local 914 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) began Saturday at the landfill and incinerator on Telfer Road in St. Clair Township.

The incident is still being investigated by the OPP.

Reurink said the OPP have been called to the site several times since the strike began by both the company and the union, “primarily from the company side.”

He added, “There has been no real incidents until this point in time when this collision is alleged to have occurred.”

Glenn Sonier, a CEP national representative, said the union member was taken to hospital and later released with some “bruises and bumps.”

Sonier said the American truck involved had brought a load of waste to the site and was leaving the gates it when the incident happened.

Sonier added that a truck that appeared to be leaking material as it was approaching the site was reported by the union Tuesday to the Ontario Ministry of Environment.

No new talks had been scheduled as of Wednesday, Sonier said.

“The union has offered to the company we’re always ready, willing and able, but I’m not sure the company has the same position,” he said.

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MONTREAL – Canadian National Railway Co. is set to resume mediated talks with Teamsters Canada to avoid a second strike within a year, this time by 2,700 train conductors, yardsmen and traffic co-ordinators.

The labour contract talks, which have been proceeding since May, have stalled over non-monetary issues and a relationship that the government-appointed conciliation commissioner labelled “dysfunctional.”

The union began by meeting with the mediator on Wednesday and then planned to meet company negotiators later in the day or on Thursday.

The workers’ contract expired July 22 and either side can give 72-hours notice for a strike or lockout.

The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference said it wants to avoid a strike but is frustrated by the Montreal-based railway’s unwillingness to negotiate.

“We have no intention of serving notice to go on strike. If the company changes the terms and conditions of our collective agreement, depending on the nature of the change, we’ll judge ourselves accordingly,” union spokesman Bryan Boechler said outside the railway’s downtown headquarters.

Boechler said he was pessimistic that the “last-chance meetings” will succeed in breaking the deadlock.

The union said it’s returning to the negotiating table with an “open attitude” but “will not compromise with respect to health and safety issues.”

One of the big issues for the Teamsters is scheduled hours of work for its members, instead of being constantly on call.

The union says the company wants to eliminate brakemen on all trains and all road crews to do yard work.

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As the troubled RCMP heads toward a crucial shift in labour relations, a battle is brewing between pro-and anti-union factions in the force.

At the heart of forthcoming changes is an April 2009 ruling by Ontario Superior Court Justice Ian McDonnell that the RCMP labour relations system is unconstitutional because it denies the right of freedom of association to rank and file officers.

Unless there is a court-ordered delay, the current system becomes illegal on Oct. 6.

The 17,000 Mounties have no independent association or union-type organization to handle collective bargaining and intervene on discipline and other labour relations issues.

Instead they have a so-called Staff Relations Representative Program, which is a system of divisional representatives who are RCMP employees.

They report rank and file concerns to the commissioner who is under no obligation to respond to the reports.

If the Oct. 6 deadline sticks, these employees will have the right to choose between the current system, an independent association or whatever representation they think best.

However, they are not, by law, allowed to join an outside “industrial” union.

McDonnell delayed implementation of his 2009 ruling to give the federal government a chance to introduce legislation to reform RCMP labour relations.

The government waited more than a year — until June — to table the RCMP Modernization Act that calls for a significant overhaul. Despite its apparent promise, those pushing for change now see it as a stall tactic.

Critics have long-complained that it is impossible for rank and file to be fairly represented by people who are paid by management and who, according to the force, get automatic promotion every two years.

RCMP officers in Quebec, B.C., Ontario and Ottawa headquarters have set up associations, but Mountie management is under no obligation to deal with them.

The federal government, which has unsuccessfully challenged the court ruling three times, has launched a fourth appeal, partly based on the complexities of Bill C-43 and the time it will take to push the bill through Parliament.

There is deep suspicion among those fighting for free association that if the government gets a deadline extension, the proposed legislation will disappear and never become law.

“This is a poker game going on,” said one person close to the situation. “A delay would get the government off the hook and I have never seen an employer willingly give up control. Here the employer is the government.”

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Despite the insistence shown by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) to negotiate, a strike or lockout at Canadian National (CN) could be inevitable. Either party could now serve 72 hours notice to commence action.

The TCRC represents some 2,700 train conductors, yardmen and traffic coordinators who have been without a work contract since July 22.  CN requested conciliation after only six days of negotiation, starting the countdown to a strike/lockout situation.  CN’s continued unwillingness to negotiate has been very frustrating.

Last-chance meetings are being held this week in an attempt to break the deadlock, but union negotiators are pessimistic as to the results that will eventually arise from these discussions.

“We are returning to the bargaining table with an open attitude,” explains Bryan Boechler, spokesperson for the Teamsters Union in this matter. “However, we will not compromise with respect to health and safety issues.”

Ballots were sent to TCRC members, and the results that came back were clear: 90% voted in favour of a work stoppage if no agreement can be achieved.

The report filed by the conciliator some time ago has had no effect whatsoever on the course of the bargaining process as the conciliator basically rejected the union’s concerns regarding the rail carrier’s intention to increase the workload of employees already working up to eighteen hours per day. Furthermore, the extremely high number of grievances pending between the employer and the union points to a culture that is quickly deteriorating.

The Teamsters Union is concerned by the prospect of reliving what the locomotive engineers went through in December 2009. Let us recall that CN then broke off talks and forced the union to strike (which at once triggered the federal government to threaten to enact special back-to-work legislation). Afterward, an arbitrator was appointed to the case.

“A strike is inevitable if CN decides to go ahead and unilaterally modify the working conditions that impact the health and safety of our members,” warns Mr. Boechler. “We cannot and will not sit idly by and allow the company to jeopardize the lives of the workers and the general Canadian population.”

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Both sides in a long-running strike at Voisey’s Bay Nickel’s mine in northern Labrador have adjourned talks for a week.

Independent mediator Bill Wells has been working with mining giant Vale and the United Steelworkers union to resolve a strike that started in August 2009.

Neither side is commenting on whether anything has been accomplished since Wells entered the talks earlier this month.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government hired Wells to help break an impasse that has kept the two sides apart, even after a similar Vale strike in Ontario ended after one year on the picket lines.

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Picket lines went up at 3 a.m. Saturday at the Clean Harbors Canada Inc., site on Telfer Road in St. Clair Township.

The strike involves about 80 drivers, operators, heavy equipment operators, lab workers and mechanics represented by Local 914 of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP.)

Negotiations aimed at reaching a new contract went on until shortly before the picket lines went up, according to Glenn Sonier, a CEP national representative.

The union and company are at odds on several key issues, including health and safety, job security, internal equity, benefits and pensions, he said.

“We’re trying to find a place to land and we haven’t been able to do that yet,” he said.

“I’m hoping over the course of a short period, we find the right answers.”

Union members working in the plant’s operations group have been without a contract since April, Sonier said.

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As students at the University of Western Ontario groaned Thursday over the news school could be put on hold because of a labour dispute, the faculty union prepared for next week’s strike vote.

“Students don’t want a strike, they have paid a lot of money to go here and they want to see the year through,” said Mike Tithecott, head of UWO’s student council.

“We’re not worried, because they say (a strike vote) is a normal occurrence, but we don’t want a strike.”

In the midst of negotiations with administration, the University of Western Ontario Faculty Association has planned a strike vote between Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.

Both the University administration and UWOFA stressed Thursday a strike vote does not mean there will be a strike, noting there have been three strike votes at Western in recent history, with no strikes.

“It’s used to bring renewed focus to the table, but it doesn’t mean you are going to go on strike,” said UWOFA head James Compton.

At issue is the university’s proposal to introduce a new performance-review process that would “run contrary to the standard best practices,” Compton added.

“It isn’t about money, it is about a concern over performance-management techniques that are foreign to Canadian scholarship and best practices generally.”

He said the union’s more than 1,400 members are already subjected to ongoing reviews through student evaluations, internal committee reviews and external and internal critiques of research.

“Peer review and self governance took a long time to get right, and we have that at Western and good universities have that – it’s what marks universities off from high schools,” he said.

Annual performance evaluations could also “weaken the tenure system,” he added.

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The Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) is renewing its support for United Steelworkers (USW) on the Vale Inco picket line in Voisey’s Bay, Labrador with a donation of $3,000 to the USW District 6 strike fund.

This strike is about to enter its 15th month and is now the longest-ever labour dispute in the history of the mining operations in Canada that were previously owned by Inco.

Until July, when the Brazil-based mining corporation finally settled with its employees in Port Colborne and Sudbury, Ontario, 3,000 USW members had been on strike for nearly a year because they refused to accept deep concessions.

“Just last week nurses united with workers from across Ontario to block scabs from entering an Engineered Coated Products plant in Brantford where United Steelworkers members have been fighting for good jobs for two years,” said ONA President Linda Haslam-Stroud, RN. “Our three-day blockade was successful at forcing that employer back to the bargaining table.”

“There’s no good reason that workers anywhere should have to go without work for so long just to maintain the middle-class standards that their parents and grandparents achieved,” said Haslam-Stroud. “Registered nurses in Ontario call on Vale Inco to start negotiating a fair deal with its employees in Voisey’s Bay today.”

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The strike by 150 support staff at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine is “disgusting,” “immoral” and has gone on far too long, says the vice-president of Laurentian University’s Graduate Students’ Association.

The five-week labour dispute is forcing students and faculty to cross the picket line of members of OPSEU Local 677 to get to classes, which is “morally reprehensible” to them, said Noa Gang.

“This won’t stand,” she told a meeting of the board of directors of NOSM at the university’s health sciences building Wednesday afternoon.

Gang and about a dozen others left a solidarity rally staged in support of strikers to appeal to NOSM’s board of directors to end the strike against administrative, clerical and technical workers.

They have been off the job at NOSM’s twin campuses at Laurentian and Lakehead University in Thunder Bay since Aug. 16 over issues such as work hours and scheduling.

Protesters chanted outside the locked doors of the board meeting until they were told eight of them could attend the meeting and one representative could speak for 10 minutes at the end of the session.

Three meetings of the NOSM board were held Wednesday afternoon -a meeting of its outgoing board, its annual general meeting and the first meeting of a newly appointed board.

All meetings were abbreviated, largely because support staff are off the job.

Dean Dr. Roger Strasser, speaking from the Lakehead campus via a televised link, said several times throughout the three meetings that only activities essential to “learners” are being undertaken at the medical school during the labour disruption.

Gang and supporters appealed to Dominic Giroux, Laurentian’s president and the vice-chair of the NOSM board, to acknowledge that many Laurentian students other than medical learners are affected by the strike.

She told the board it should be ashamed for turning its back on students who are being affected by the strike and whose tuitions pay salaries at Laurentian.

For instance, some research labs for Laurentian students are not able to go ahead because of the strike.

Four days of mediated talks between the bargaining committees for NOSM and OPSEU Local 677 adjourned Friday in Thunder Bay. The medical school says the union walked away from bargaining table, but OPSEU bargaining Tyler England said it was up to NOSM to respond to language his team submitted.

Both sides have agreed to resume bargaining Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, without a mediator. England said his team is ready to go back to the bargaining table sooner if NOSM’s negotiators respond to the union’s last proposal.

Gang also called on Laurentian University to take back a statement posted on its website that OPSEU had agreed not to delay traffic entering the university campus.

She called the statement erroneous and said it is jeopardizing the safety of picketers when motorists frustrated with the delay of information pickets drive through the lines.

At Wednesday afternoon’s solidarity event, picketers were stopping vehicles, but drivers who insisted upon proceeding were allowed through without delay.

About a dozen members of United Steelworkers Local 6500 attended the rally to lend their support. That local has just gone back to work after an almost year-long strike against Vale Ltd.

USW staff representative Wes Dowsett urged strikers to hang in “one day longer … be assured you won’t be here alone.”

They and others began chanting “Fair Deal Now,” the slogan of Steelworkers during their strike.

NOSM faculty member Stacey Ritz said it was the hard work of many at Canada’s newest medical school, including striking OPSEU members, that made NOSM “an unsurpassed success.”

When NOSM was celebrating the graduation of its charter class of doctors last year, OPSEU members could not have imagined themselves on a picket line, she said.

“I share your dismay and your disillusionment and your disappointment,” said Ritz. “We want a fair deal.”

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