TORONTO — The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference is suing Canadian Pacific, alleging that the railroad is forcing employees to work beyond their hours of service in violation of a 2018 arbitration order.
Reuters News reported on Dec. 20 that earlier this year the Teamsters filed a lawsuit against CP in federal court and that the case could go to trial in 2020. The suit states that the railroad should be fined $50,000 every day it forces a train crew to work beyond its normal 12 hours.
The Teamsters declined to comment on the report. In a statement to Reuters, a CP spokesman denied the allegations and said it would “vigorously defend” itself in court.
Legal experts told Reuters that resolving a labor issue in the court system is a rare move. “It would be very uncommon,” said Rafael Gomez of the University of Toronto.
Fatigue has been an issue of contention between labor and railroads in recent years. It was a major point of contention during last month’s week-long strike at Canadian National. During the strike, the Teamsters released an audio clip that they stated depicted management forcing a train crew to work even after the conductor said they were exhausted.
Forced to work because of sickness/fatigued & have a serious accident/incident, workers fault according to some companies.
Trying to get management to understand that a worker is too tired to function safely is, depending on the company, a major problem. At one trucking company management’s solution was to hand out little white pills. Other companies solutions included dismissing the driver somewhere in America(it unusually took a month Of more to find the truck).
Wasn’t the recent CN strike mainly about this issue?
I don’t know the law or union rules, but I would think that any railroad worker who feels they cannot work safely (exhaustion, sickness, whatever) should be able to clock out. If they make a mistake due to their inability to work safely they put their fellow workers, the public, and themselves in danger.