Carriers Rescheduling Due to Canadian Rail Strike Threat
With the threat of an imminent rail strike in Canada, carriers have already been blanking and diverting sailings on services from Asia to the Canadian West Coast.
The potential for strike action moved a step closer recently after a bout of talks between the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union (TCRC), the Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) union and the Canadian National Railway (CN) were abandoned less than halfway through.
On the 1st May, it was announced that around 9,000 workers from the TCRC and CPKC unions had voted in favour of strike action and they were set to strike from 22 May after a 21 day cooling off period.
The Canadian government then referred the matter to the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) on the 10th May, and under Canadian labour law a strike cannot start until the board make a decision. That decision has not come yet, but the recent breakdown in talks has made the strike action more likely.
As a result, carriers serving Canada’ West Coast have started to make arrangements for vessels to omit, blank or swap calls for the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert this month. At this stage, ports on the Eastern coast have not seen similar action, but will be affected should a strike go ahead.
The Canadian railways are also critical for the movement of goods in and out of certain regions in the USA, including the Midwest, Northwest and Northeast. Therefore, a Canadian rail strike action will have an impact on some US services too.
As ever, the team at Atlantic Pacific are monitoring the situation closely.
