The CN strike is perfectly legal
CN wants the UTU strike ruled illegal because the local didn’t get the strike authorized by the international. Hilarious.
Since when does the union’s internal process count? Actually, in two places: voting to start or stop a strike and voting to change unions. In these two places the labour board usually wants to supervise the process.
But CN wants the strike to end because buddy in Ottawa didn’t phone buddy senior in Washington? Please.
Imagine if the union called the police because local management didn’t fax head office before cancelling the Christmas party.
CN appears to have no other strategy for dealing with the strike. At least not one that would include negotiating.
There are some fairly celebrated strikes in this country that went on for a long time despite the fact that Washington (I mean the international union head office) didn’t approve. Gainers springs to mind.
But if the UTU head office wasn’t onside before, they’d better be now. Otherwise, there’ll be another famous Canadian union vs international union story that will replay itself.
I don’t know too much about the issues in this strike, though the sides seem far apart (doubling the length of a paid meal period is a big deal, for example).
But I applaud the union for having the guts to go on strike. You have to think that the company is launching such a pathetic case because they reckon the federal government is just anti-union enough to go with it.
To walk off the job in the face of that is not an easy thing to do.
March 7th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
you are smart…