IBEW Still Negotiating With CN Rail

CN Rail Signs Tentative Agreement With Train Crews
Mon Feb 14, 4:24 PM ET

By Allan Dowd

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Canadian National Railway has signed a tentative agreement with the United Transportation Union (news - web sites), one of three key Canadian unions with expired contracts, officials said on Monday.

The three-year deal for about 2,600 conductors, brakemen, yard crews and traffic co-ordinators, will be retroactive to Jan. 1, 2004, and includes wage hikes and "quality of life improvements," the union and company said.

Specific details of the tentative agreement were not released pending a ratification vote by the workers. A date for the vote has not been scheduled.

CN has been without contracts since the end of 2003 with the UTU, the Teamsters, which represent 1,750 locomotive engineers, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents 630 signal maintainers.

The talks do not involve CN's employees in the United States or those on its newly acquired BC Rail unit. The Montreal-headquartered railway is Canada's largest rail carrier and No. 5 in North America.

A CN spokesman said the company expected talks with the Teamsters and IBEW would resume shortly.

The Teamsters and UTU are political rivals in the union movement and officials have speculated the Teamsters would not want to resume talks until the UTU contract was settled.

Unresolved issues in the Teamsters dispute include rest break rules and time off, according the union. The IBEW has said that differences over work rules are also an issue in its dispute.

The Teamsters received a strike mandate this month from the engineers, but there cannot be a strike or lockout until the Canadian Industrial Relations Board completes a review of essential service levels.

The CIRB entered the dispute in late December when rhetoric in the negotiations began to heat up. It has not said when it will release its service-level decision.

The United Steelworkers Union, which represents 2,250 CN Rail track maintenance workers in Canada, is conducting a ratification vote on a tentative agreement reached with the company in January.