February
Updates
February 23, 2006
Brothers and Sisters,
We are now two months into the New Year and everything, for the
most part, has been moving along fairly well.
As you are all aware, CPRailway has had a huge reorganization at
its upper levels, with many of the AVP's, Directors and Managers
retiring or moving over to different portfolios. In Engineering,
the Operations side of the Railway is now clearly in charge, with
all Service Area Track and B&S issues answerable to the Vice
presdient of Operations, Brock Winters. Vern Graham, the Vice President
of Engineering seems to be left managing only the TP & E, however
Anthony Manconi (from Mechanical) was moved in to replace Gord
Pozzobon.
I have had some dealings with Doug McFarlane, the AVP who has taken
over Brian O'Rourke's responsibilities and the issues that we have
dealt with have been refreshingly handled in a straightforward
and honest manner. Recently, he joined me at a meeting in Revelstoke,
BC to speak with, and more importantly to listen to, the men and
women who have voiced a number of concerns that came to a head
with the untimely death of Bob Martin on December 14th, 2005, while
clearing ice in the mount MacDonald tunnel. We are presently putting
together actions to address and correct their concerns and we will
return for a follow up meeting in about a month or so, to insure
that they have been adhered to.
This year the company bulletined the Pacific Region TP&E crews
with non-conforming rest days (rest days other than Saturday, Sunday,
Monday and Friday, Saturday, Sunday) for all crews working on the
main line from April 1st untill the end of the year (that will
be over 8 months without a weekend off). This is unacceptable and
has been grieved. We are also preparing a case to get an injunction
in court to stop them unless we can reach a satisfactory resolve.
The company has stated that they have grounds under article 5.1
as it is an operational requirement. It is incumbent on them to
prove this though, and up to this point they haven't. They have
been making offers, however none have been acceptable up to this
point.
On the Prairies we were able to keep the conforming rest days,
allow for an extra 5 cents per km for the B-1 travel allowance
for all employees in the region and insure a full work season for
both district 1 and district 2. However it does entail voluntary
crossing of BSTs for three crews, to allow the company to try their "swarming" plan
(where they build a "super crew" to attack a project
and get it done, allowing less disruption of traffic) for the completion
of work. This is a temporary arrangement for this season and does
have built in protection whereby we can cancel the agreement with
7 days written notice, if it is not working out as planned.
We are gearing up for our bargaining to begin with CPR in early
July, and have arranged training on collective bargaining, conciliation,
job actions, work stoppage and federal mediation to be held jointly
with the running trades side of the TCRC. The training will be
in Vancouver on April 8th and 9th.
Negotiations are progressing on the HBR and CTR shortlines in Manitoba.
As Gary Doherty is our chief negotiator in those sessions, he will
also be attending the training.
After the training, our bargaining committee will meet a few weeks
later, to begin putting together the main table demands. We should
have them finalized by the beginning of June, when we will serve
notice to the company to commence bargaining on July 4th, 2006.
We also have a sub-committee working on a few of the more complex
issues to determine feasability and language, and they are expecting
to have their reports ready for the first meeting of the committee.
Your TCRC MWED bargaining committee this round will be Jim Daniel
(Pacific Region), Gary McDougal (Prairie Region), Bill Brake (Eastern
Region) and David Scott (Atlantic Region), along with myself and
Director Spikula. Don Lesuk and Yves Gagnon will be assisting on
pension and benefit issues.
I realize that you have all been waiting patiently for the new
collective agreement. Our part was finished a long time ago and
a copy is posted on the website (www.tcrcmwed.ca) and has been
for months. I have been promised, once again, that it is at the
printers and will be in our hands by the middle of March. I am
equally anxious to get the agreement at that time or to hear what
creative excuse they are going to use this time. After 6 months
of excuses, we have learned a valuable lesson that we will bring
to bargaining this round.
I talked with Vice President Tirelli's wife yesterday and she tells me that Roberto
is doing well. I expressed all of our wishes for a speedy recovery and I look
forward to seeing him back to work later in the spring.
Fraternally,
Bill Brehl
President
TCRC MWED
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