By David Ljunggren and Promit Mukherjee
OTTAWA (Reuters) – The Canadian government moved quickly on Thursday to end an unprecedented rail stoppage the same day it began, announcing it would send the matter to binding arbitration.
Canada’s top two railroads had locked out more than 9,000 unionized workers, triggering a simultaneous rail stoppage that business groups said could inflict hundreds of millions of dollars in economic damage.
Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon told reporters he was acting “in order to ensure that the activities of both of these rail companies immediately resume”.
The companies – Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City – and the Teamsters union blamed each other for the work stoppage after multiple rounds of talks failed to yield an agreement.
(Reporting by Abhinav Parmar and Jahnavi Nidumolu in Bengaluru and Allison Lampert in Montreal, additional reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Writing by Abhijith Ganavaparam; Edited by David Ljunggren, Rod Nickel, Jamie Freed, Jacqueline Wong and Sriraj Kalluvila)
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