Non-conforming rest days

August 5, 2006

Brothers and Sisters,

Recently CPRail won a case at CROA concerning non-conforming rest days (rest days other than the agreed upon weekends) for certain crews on the TP&E in the Pacific Region from August 28th until November 15th, 2006. The award was very specific, and was granted only because the arbitrator accepted the company's arguments and its evidence relaying that it was a necessity of operational requirement. We disagreed with the company's 'facts' and its argument, but the arbitrator ruled that for specific crews, on specific territories for a specified duration, the company could schedule rest days other than "Friday, Saturday & Sunday or Saturday, Sunday &Monday" (the crews are on a 4/3 schedule).

I feared at the time that the company would attempt to expand this decision to include other non-specified employees but was assured by LR officers that this would not happen, as the decision clearly stated whom it applied to..

On August 2nd, in the BC Interior Service Area, a notice was issued, scheduling non-conforming rest days for B&S employees in Revelstoke. The company did not contact the Union as they are required to nor did they show any necessity for operational requirement, they just went straight to our membership and told them that they were taking away their scheduled rest days.

I immediately attempted to contact upper management at CPRail and Jim Daniel called the service area management to get details. Our first attempt at communications failed, as no one that was called answered. Messages were left and the next day, we began getting return calls.

I will not go into full detail at this time as we are still internally discussing the possibility of lodging a formal CIRB unfair labour practice complaint. Aside from the Collective Agreement violations, we see the company's actions here as a possible attempt to undermine our bargaining position at the National table, to bargain in bad faith as this issue is already before us in negotiations and as a violation of the "business as usual" legislation enshrined in section 50 (d) of part I of the Canada Labour Codes.

Suffice it to say, once we were able to get hold of the company, discussions were held, positions were clarified, e-mails were exchanged and by August 4th, the company had committed to rescind the notice (I have still not received confirmation of this being done). They also apologized for what they summarized as a series of 'multiple errors' by local management'.

We won this round, but Brothers and Sisters, to me, the writing is on the wall. I believe that they will not rest until they have complete control over our time off as well as our time on. They want to be able to take away our weekends at will. Just read the demands that they submitted for bargaining (they can be found on our website). Can you live with that?

Do you want to be working on every weekend as a regular day? I know that the company officers don't. Actually, when I asked their negotiating team if they were willing to work weekends to get a contract done (probably the most important thing these guys will work on this year), I was told by one that he is a single father and he can't work on weekends that he has his kids. I can appreciate this, as I'm sure almost all of you can. Funny how these people don't think that it applies to us as well, though.

Its kind of like how they all take their vacations in the summer while we aren't allowed to, or that they get 6 "flex" days off every year(on top of their AV and general holidays) while we can't even get paid for our three day waiting period prior to Manulife or how they all have a benefit card for their prescriptions while we have to pay out of our pockets and wait for a refund.

Well, Brothers and Sisters, this is why we are TEAMSTERS. Enough is enough. Our weekends are OUR weekends. Our families are important to us and we demand to be treated with respect.

Anyone who is as fed up with this as much as we are and is going to be in the Pacific Region during the next week or two, call Jim Daniel at (250) 814 8994, Ross Terry at (403) 320 9320 or me at (519) 819 1530. We will try to make sure that you get your voice heard, loud and clear.

Together we can effect real change.

Stay safe and Stay strong,

Bill Brehl
President
TCRC MWED