SD70Dude Our strike vote was conducted some time ago. Yesterday was the last day of official negotiations. They will keep talking, even after a strike starts. To me, announcing layoffs right before a strike is a big slap in the face. "We don't need you"
Our strike vote was conducted some time ago. Yesterday was the last day of official negotiations.
They will keep talking, even after a strike starts.
To me, announcing layoffs right before a strike is a big slap in the face. "We don't need you"
Thanks for the clarification..
There’s probably never a good time to announce layoffs..but announcing one after an agreement has been reached could be seen as having negotiated in bad faith. Clearly, announcing layoffs before a strike also has its pitfalls. Maybe they’re attempting to put all their cards on the table..surely management isn’t making it easier on themselves with this announcement.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
To CN’s credit though, they’ve announced these layoffs before next week’s strike deadline. They could have made it easier on themselves and waited until after the vote to make the announcement. Now I’m guessing an agreement will be harder to reach by Tuesday.
I see they are downplaying the threat of a strike, which could start as early as Tuesday. Negotiations are of course continuing, even as I write this tonight, but CN is still demanding concessions that I do not believe are reasonable.
We gave strike notice the last couple times and in both cases a last minute deal averted a strike. But somehow this time feels different, and I would not be surprised to see the Conductors, Trainmen and Yardmen walk off the job Tuesday morning.
And with Parliament not yet back there will be no immediate back-to-work legislation.
Speak of the devil.. CN laying off 1600 amid weakening economy .. just read it in the Globe and Mail..
A number of reasons.. the oil patch (here in Canada) is suffering... the overall climate of instability in the world.. Accelerating technological change. These would be the main three. And here in Ontario (where I am) we're all too aware that our prosperity.. if one could even call it that.. is largely dependent on the auto sector which is to a great degree controlled by the United States and your America first president. We've seen alot of layoffs here in the last year, and those who remain aren't feeling too secure in their jobs..Sure, the unemployment numbers remain low, but the quality of those jobs has eroded over time as once skilled workers who built locomotives (for example) at the GM plant in London are now working as cabbies, servers etc. And so it is with the auto workers who were let go in Oshawa, St Catharines, and Windsor... it all adds up to a general feeling of agnst.. (not for me personally because I'm in my 50s, debt free, and have my own business) But so many here are mortgaged to the hilt.. kids in daycare.. ($$$)..and lots of consumer debt to boot.
I would be delighted if this is the low point. But why do you think people are insecure in their jobs now? I would guess they must feel that there are shrinking job opportunities and wage stagnation. They may also fear losing their jobs because they see the year long economic trend sagging.
Not sure how important the tariffs are in cooling the economy, but this I do know: when people aren't secure in their jobs they tend to spend less. And there seem to be many who aren't feeling secure right now, and they're curbing their spending accordingly. Battening down the hatches may be the responsible thing to do, but if we all suddenly become fiscally conservative the overall result will be lower consumer spending and less goods transported. And bingo.. that's what we're seeing.
This and other signals sure seem like strong indicators of a slowing economy. I see that in late August, our Administration switched from insisting that the new tariffs would not harm us at all, to allowing that they might cause a very short recession, like a couple months long. We were told that even if they caused a short recession, the tariffs just had to be done. If they caused a short recession, so be it. It leads me to wonder if the tariffs just had to be done if they cause a lost decade.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Canadian National continues to cut costs in the face of rapidly weakening freight demand across virtually all types of traffic. On a revenue ton mile basis, CN’s volume has slumped 12% to 13% over the past two weeks am...
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/11/13-canadian-national-expects-traffic-slowdown-to-continue
Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine
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