CN workers go on strike

Nov 19, 2019

More than 3,000 employees walked off the job Tuesday

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Staff at one of Canada’s national railways are striking.

On Saturday, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), which represents more than 3,000 conductors, trainpersons and yardpersons at Canadian National Railway (CN), served the company with notice of its intent to strike.

Under the Canada Labour Code, a union must give an employer a written 72-hour strike notice. Workers walked off the job at 12:01 a.m. ET Tuesday.

The previous collective agreement between the two parties expired on July 23.

Exercising the right to strike will help ensure employee safety.

“Fatigue has been recognized by the Transportation Safety Board as a major safety problem in this industry. Too many railroaders are operating trains when they should be resting,” Lyndon Isaak, president of the TCRC, said in a statement. “For the safety of all Canadians, we cannot allow CN to make it even harder for our members to get the rest they need.”

The strike action also comes after CN celebrated a good start to the 2019-2020 crop year.

The railway moved 2.8 million metric tonnes of grain in October, breaking the previous record of 2.7 million metric tonnes in April 2019.

Producers can ill afford a delay in grain transportation.

“We’ve certainly been monitoring the situation and it’s a huge blow if we lost our rail shipments,” John Guelly, chair of the Alberta Canola Producers Commission, told Farms.com. “Our canola products are shipped via rail, and this strike would certainly cause a lot of congestion on top of all the other problems we’re having.

“If elevators and crushers can’t ship product by rail, it’s going to backlog everything and stop delivery. And if you can’t deliver a product, you’re not going to get a cheque for anything.”

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.