(Alice McFarlane/farmnewsNOW Staff)

By Alice McFarlane

Rail Strike

Farmers concerned as rail strike looms

Nov 18, 2019 | 4:05 PM

The Western Canadian Wheat Growers (WCWG) said a possible strike at CN Rail would cause a major disruption to prairie grain exports.

On Saturday, the Teamsters Canadian Rail Conference, which represents approximately 3,200 CN employees, issued a 72-hour notice of its intention to strike.

Wheat Growers chair and Rosetown area farmer Jim Wickett said it’s disappointing this is happening during prime shipping season for grain.

“We’re headed back into winter where everything slows down and this is the time when we need to really be pushing things out,” he said. “I mean, there’s this awful harvest that everybody experienced. There were certainly some delays in shipping and there’s some things that really got out of sequence at the west coast and that delayed a lot of things there in the loading and unloading of cars. This is just piling on.”

Wickett said you can’t take 3,000 CN employees out of the system and expect it to run anywhere near capacity. He felt the federal government should ensure there is no significant stoppage to grain movement.

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“I think they need to step in. I don’t think the Canadian economy can be held hostage just so an American company can maintain its share price and dividends to some Wall Street equity firms,” Wickett said. “I think a settlement has to come, whether that’s negotiated and both parties agree to it and are somewhat happy or have an imposed one and they can both go away grumpy. Either way we need to keep all commodities going whether it’s grain, lumber, coal, oil, canola oil, whichever it is, these things need to keep going.”

CN delivers roughly 5,600 hopper cars per week to Canadian elevators, representing over half a million tonnes of grain. The new federal cabinet will be sworn in on Wednesday.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF