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New Canadian Politics Thread

Re-defining the economic capitalist/communist divide as the same as the political democratic/totalitarian divide has been a project of the right for generations.
 
Good. given the duopoly and local rail’s reliance on the cn and cpka tracks, a trike would be devastating for the Canadian economy.
 
I believe they are being ordered back to work and go to binding arbitration and agreed but cpka is looking to take it to court.

This is the first time both companies have been on strike at the same time.

Honestly, given the effect on the whole economy and population I think they should be treated like the police and fire services as essential services.
 
anne25 said:
I believe they are being ordered back to work and go to binding arbitration and agreed but cpka is looking to take it to court.

This is the first time both companies have been on strike at the same time.

Honestly, given the effect on the whole economy and population I think they should be treated like the police and fire services as essential services.
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Then shouldn't we nationalize the industry?

Private profits and taking away workers rights isn't exactly a step forward.
 
I’m not sure there is a perfect answer at this point other than compulsory arbitration. This is the first time that both rail services have been on strike at the same time so the major effects and possible long term effects have not been as much of an issue nationally and internationally.

I understand the right to bargain and the disruption to your employer but the people who will suffer most have no say in the matter.

It is not the first time that the government has used back to work legislation and both workers and employers managed to get a deal done that may not satisfy either side completely but was a reasonable compromise .

I guess I’m not the best person to weigh in on this issue because when I was working my working conditions, pay and benefit increases and freezes where at the whim of the goverernment.
 
If an industry is that necessary to the economy though, the weight of it's impact from labour actions can't just be put on labour though. The government has to either look into anti trust to split the industry up, nationalize the infrastructure, etc, etc. Jamming the workers to accept less than they're worth shouldn't be the default button to push so we can protect private profits.
 
Don’t know why the workers would be any more or less disadvantaged than ownership in arbitration.

Also, our entire common law related to workers rights in Canada is ridiculous pro worker.

As for the competition effects, I think the only solution there would be to nationalize the lines which is untenable. Prices would go up significantly and maintenance / performance would become a potentially big issue if they broke up the lines, imo.
 
Arbitration won’t inherently work out in favour of one side or the other though.

And nationalizing it wouldn’t remove the labour issues.
 
mbow30 said:
Don’t know why the workers would be any more or less disadvantaged than ownership in arbitration.
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The outcomes of strikes tend to favour labour pretty heavily. Forced arbitration will likely lead to the union taking less than they would have gotten through strike action.

I get that the economic impact would be outsized and that makes it necessary to force arbitration, but what I'm saying is that there's been multiple failures along the way by government in managing an essential industry if the necessary solution to the problem is curtailing the bargaining power of the workforce.

mbow30 said:
As for the competition effects, I think the only solution there would be to nationalize the lines which is untenable. Prices would go up significantly and maintenance / performance would become a potentially big issue if they broke up the lines, imo.
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Prices probably go up, but I don't see why line maintenance would become an issue. The US is similarly privatized and their rail safety record is way, way worse than nationalized European freight rail systems (for numerous regulatory reasons, not just the quality of the network itself). There's a bag of benefits that would come from nationalizing rail networks, the biggest probably being the ability to expand high speed (by Canadian standards) regional passenger rail service and give it priority over freight.
leafman101 said:
And nationalizing it wouldn’t remove the labour issues.
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Nationalizing the network would lower barriers to entry for competition and probably break the duopoly. CN+CP booked 7-8B USD in profits last year. They're wildly profitable by international railroad standards. There's lots of room for competition, which means lots of room for labour to negotiate for better conditions without creating an economic crisis for the country.
 
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