August 27, 2024

Smash the Silence on Health and Safety Issues
Railway Workers Are Raising!
All Out to Help Them Realize the Justice of Their Cause!

A single-minded pursuit of the narrow private interests and their spokespersons in the media and governments is to only mention the word “labour” for purposes of denigrating it. The current resistance of Canada’s railway workers to dangerous working conditions is a case in point. These dangerous working conditions directly endanger the lives of the workers and public safety. The workers know what they need to defend their own health and safety and the safety of the public. Railway owners and the government of Canada are duty-bound to listen to them because they are the expert opinion on this matter.

But with rare exceptions what are called mainstream media never ever go to the heart of the matter. And that is the story. Instead, they play games with people’s lives. One way they do so is to mention regulations known to be inadequate to imply that the demands of the workers are nuisance demands – as if the workers are self-serving or have a hidden aim to be lazy. Enough!

The so-called mainstream media have no interest in going after the real story. They repeat the ever more inflammatory and hysterical PR by the railway barons, pundits and government spokespersons about how the work stoppages are to blame for the disruption on supply chains which are Canada’s bread and butter, the source of its prosperity – and on it goes. Their hysterical narrative has the workers endangering Canada’s national security for which reason they must be reined in forthwith. Any union or workers who dare to raise their voices or take action in defence of their rights and the rights of all Canadians are definitely persona non grata, extremist, unreasonable and the like.

What are called mainstream media repeats this state-inspired disinformation with impunity. To call these media “mainstream” is in fact a misnomer if ever there was one. Far from being “mainstream,” state-sanctioned media are purveyors of the fanatical views and beliefs which favour the railway barons and narrow supranational private interests which are part of what is called “the supply chain.” All of it is presented as if these fanatical views are “normal”; as if they represent Canadian values and the interests of every Canadian and Quebec man, woman and child.

The fact remains that blaming labour for disruptions in production, supply chains and the like is a criminal practice to suggest that the source of wealth is the brilliance of outstanding and successful business interests, people, manipulation and so on.

Today the attitude towards labour and how it is treated by the society determines the truth of what is taking place. Labour has become disposable. By eliminating labour, the owners of capital and production facilities rake in a fortune not from production but through corruption, manipulation and fraud. The capitalists do not consider that it is thanks to labour that wealth is produced. They consider labour a “cost” which eats into their profits. But eliminating labour does not solve the fundamental problem of the falling rate of profit. The more modern methods of production and technique eliminate labour, the more the trend of a falling rate of profit is intensified. The fundamental dilemma of the owners of capital and societies today is how to become rich and more powerful without the working class producing new value, which includes that portion the owners expropriate as added-value.

One way to get ahead, say far too many wiseacres, is to cheat on the market price for the commodities you sell and the market price for the means of production you buy: buy low, sell high and ensure you eliminate the competition, which of course they claim upsets no one and causes no harm and lands you a pretty profit as if by magic! It is your right as a successful cheat and corrupt businessperson to say, “It’s just business. Everyone does it. And if you snooze, you lose.”

The problem remains: how do the people led by the working class change the direction and aim of production away from the ownership and control of a small minority who are stuck in the social class traditions of privilege and exploitation? The aim of the few in control is to become richer and even more powerful. Their aim is not the use-value of the social product of the modern means of production to serve the people and solve problems but the money-profit they expropriate from turning the use-value into exchange-value for sale in the market. This aim serves no useful purpose in today’s world and in fact makes the social and natural problems worse with endless destruction of the productive forces and natural environment, as well as negation of the human factor/social consciousness. A main use of the state and its institutions and the media it sanctions is to activate the anti-human factor/anti-social consciousness.

Only the working class has an interest in bringing forth a new economic aim and direction under the control of the people in harmony with the socialized nature of the modern economy. This aim brings into being a regime which utilizes the enormous productive power of the socialized productive forces to serve society. It achieves this because it unleashes the human factor/social consciousness of the people by organizing and mobilizing the productive forces and the use-value of the social product they produce to solve the problems confronting the people and society. This is what humanizes the relations among the people and with nature.

The working people can only make headway by developing their resistance struggles in a manner which puts political initiative in their hands. Elaborating precisely how changing the aim and direction of the modern economy creates, in a stepwise manner, a whole new world of emancipated socialized humanity.

This economy which the railway barons, pundits, so-called mainstream media and government spokespersons are extolling is one of industrial mass production under the control of a small minority which spawns economic crises, poverty, anarchy, chaos, destruction of the productive forces and wars of destruction, including presenting mass genocide, starvation, emigration, famines and droughts as the new “normal.” It is criminal activity.

All out to support the railway workers and workers in every single sector of the economy getting the health and safety conditions they require! Their working conditions are the living conditions of Canadians. Appealing to the courts and arbitration systems to seek justice by confronting them with their own laws is a necessary front of struggle but not the main one. The workers know from experience that these courts and arbitration systems are not “neutral” as the rulers claim. Not only are they aligned against the empowerment of the workers but anti-social privatization has destroyed public authorities and tends towards enforcing arbitrary ministerial police powers in the name of high ideals — as in the case of Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code. The more it goes, the more the laws and regulations the courts and arbitration systems defend are blatantly anti-worker, anti-social and anti-national.

The ruling class wants the workers and their organizations to resort to the authorities to decide the outcome of workers’ struggles without waging the main front of struggle in the court of public opinion. Canadians and Quebeckers from coast to coast must raise their voices to smash the silence on the working conditions under which railway workers and workers in every sector of the economy are forced to work on pain of losing their jobs. So long as the rulers succeed in silencing the voice of the workers, they manage to deprive them of the justice of their cause.

Smash the silence on the health and safety issues the railway workers are raising!

Notes

Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited, doing business as CPKC, is said to be a Canadian railway holding company that resulted from the merger of Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) and Kansas City Southern (KCS) on April 14, 2023.

CP paid $31 billion to acquire KCS. This created the only single-line rail network linking Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. It is headquartered in Calgary and its current net worth as of August 16, 2024 is $73.75 billion.

Keith Creel, CEO of Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd., took in a total compensation boost of 38 per cent that reached $20.1 million in 2023, company financial filings show. CPKC’s five top officers, including Creel, earned $63.5 million overall in 2023 compared with less than half that amount the previous year.

KCS was incorporated in 1893 by Kansas City real estate tycoon Arthur E. Stilwell (1859-1928) as the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railroad. By taking over existing small lines and building new stretches, he pieced together a line through Missouri and Arkansas as far south as Siloam Springs, Arkansas.

Canadian National Railway (CN) remains Canada’s largest railway, in terms of both revenue and the physical size of its rail network, spanning Canada from the Atlantic coast in Nova Scotia to the Pacific coast in British Columbia across approximately 20,000 route miles (32,000 km) of track. CN has a current net worth of $74.032 billion.

For Your Information

6 pm News August 25

On the 6 pm news in Quebec on August 25, Marc Boudreau, a lawyer specializing in labour law, said on Radio-Canada’s Telejournal that someone has pulled a rabbit out of a hat and used an article in the Canada Labour Code (Section 107), and that that person was either very imaginative or super brilliant as no one has thought to use the article despite years of big battles in the railway sector.

Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code

Under Additional Powers, Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code reads: “107 The Minister, where the Minister deems it expedient, may do such things as to the Minister seem likely to maintain or secure industrial peace and to promote conditions favourable to the settlement of industrial disputes or differences and to those ends the Minister may refer any question to the [Canada Industrial Relations Board] or direct the Board to do such things as the Minister deems necessary.”

Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) Website

A press release on the website reads:

CPKC moves to restart rail operations following CIRB order
August 24, 2024

Calgary – Canadian Pacific Kansas City today said it will restart railway operations in Canada by 00:01 ET on Monday, Aug. 26, following the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) order requiring CPKC to resume operations and Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) employees to resume their duties.

CPKC will fully comply with the CIRB order. As such, CPKC is ending the lockout initiated on Thursday, Aug. 22. CPKC has asked the TCRC for employees to return to work for the day shift on Sunday so that we can get the Canadian economy moving again as quickly as possible and avoid further disruption to supply chains. [TCRC represents approximately 6,000 conductors, conductor trainees, yard coordinators and locomotive engineers across Canadian National’s network in Canada – ed. note].

Our team is executing its restart plan for the safe and orderly resumption of rail service across Canada. We are working with customers on a balanced return to normal operations.

The CIRB will be convening a case management meeting with the parties Thursday, Aug. 29, to discuss the imposition of final binding interest arbitration.

As specified in the CIRB’s order, the existing collective agreements between the company and the union are in force.

The CIRB’s order was issued following the Canadian Minister of Labour’s direction on Thursday, Aug. 22, pursuant to his authority under Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code.

CPKC looks forward to welcoming all of our Canadian locomotive engineers, conductors, yardpersons and dispatchers back to work. We are focused on restoring our railway to full strength as we get back to serving our customers and moving Canada’s trade and commerce throughout North America.

The CIRB order ends months of unnecessary uncertainty and disruption for the Canadian economy and North American supply chains. We anticipate it will take several weeks for the railway network to fully recover from this work stoppage and a period of time beyond that for supply chains to stabilize. […]

Railway Barons’ Demands for Concessions

Both CN and CPKC are demanding concessions on issues pertaining to crew scheduling, hours of work and fatigue management. The TCRC reports that the companies are trying to overcome labour shortages by forcing these concessions. In a June 29 press release the TCRC states that “CPKC aims to gut the collective agreement of all safety-critical fatigue provisions. The end result will mean train crews would be forced to stay awake even longer, increasing the risk of derailments and other accidents. CPKC has also failed to address the understaffing of rail traffic controllers.

“Meanwhile, CN is targeting fewer articles around fatigue, but their offer is contingent on the acceptance of a forced relocation scheme. Their proposal would see workers ordered to move across the country for months at a time to fill labour shortages in remote areas of Canada. CN’s offer is also contingent on the union agreeing to extend workdays in all provinces west of Ontario.”

Extracts from Article by Bruce Curran “Who to blame for the railway labour dispute? Ottawa, but not why you think”

This article was published by the Globe and Mail, August 21. Bruce Curran, PhD, is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Manitoba.

[…] for several days, both railways have been winding down operations in anticipation of a shutdown. Much damage to Canada’s economy has already been done.

[…] the primary blame falls on the shoulders of the federal government […]

The “reason” that likely springs to mind is Ottawa’s failure to intervene to force a continuation of railway operations. Such intervention seems appealing, given the national importance of the issue, the high economic stakes and the apparent expediency of the solution, but is in reality a siren’s call.

Binding arbitration would not work particularly well at this stage […] because there are important and complex non-monetary issues still unresolved. Legislating an end to any work stoppage would likely violate workers’ rights to collectively bargain and strike, which are protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence. The Canada Industrial Relations Board has also recently ruled that rail transportation by the two railways is not an “essential service,” a status that would give legal standing for the government to force staff back to work, a decision that is correct under both national and international law.

Why Canada is on the verge of an unprecedented rail labour stoppage

Instead, the government has been derelict in implementing a robust set of safety rules covering all railway workers in safety-sensitive positions. For CN and CPKC workers, safety rules (and, in particular, those to prevent worker fatigue and reduce the chances of accidents) appear to be a major issue in the current round of negotiations. The union asserts that the companies are demanding concessions on issues such as rail safety, fatigue management and crew scheduling, and that CPKC is understaffing rail-traffic controllers.

Transport Canada, the federal department responsible for regulating rail safety has, to date, failed to align the sector’s fatigue-management regulations and practices with the latest research on fatigue science. A more systematic approach to fatigue management is necessary for all employees with duties essential to safe railway operation.

The department has been working on a set of “Fatigue Management System Regulations” for a number of years. It conducted a series of consultations with stakeholders, which closed in April, 2022. Draft regulations are planned for publication and consultation, but are not expected until 2025.

[…] Transport Canada implemented some improvements in 2020, when it introduced the Duty and Rest Period Rules for Railway Operating Employees […] which have a phased implementation from 2022 to 2024, establish shorter limits on duty periods, longer minimum rest periods and limits on the number of hours that can be worked in a week and/or month. It also required railways to submit fatigue-management plans to Transport Canada by November, 2022, but these improved protections only cover some operational employees.

In their public communications, the railways emphasize that their recent offers to workers meet the safety requirements. However, a more comprehensive set of regulations that introduce a fatigue-management system and apply to all safety-sensitive railway employees – not just operators – is required.

Fatigue impairs worker performance, including attention, vigilance and general cognitive functioning, and poses a risk to the safe operation of a railway, both for workers and the general public. From the early 1990s, investigations and inquiries have identified fatigue as a contributing factor in more than 30 rail accidents in Canada. Even though the industry and Transport Canada have known sleep-related fatigue to be a problem for more than 20 years, the responses to date have not been adequate to fully address the issue.

There have been persistent demands made by unions and employees to improve rail operation safety, and the CN strike in 2019 was over safety-related issues. […]

The economic effects so far, and the worse effects that may yet occur owing to a work stoppage, could have been prevented if Ottawa had moved more quickly to enact better safety regulations for railway workers. The current labour negotiations have been a slow-motion train wreck, with Ottawa asleep at the switch.