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The Canadian government intervened in the freight rail shutdown, forcing the railways and labor union into arbitration and effectively ending the stoppage that had begun less than 17 hours earlier. Labor Minister Steven MacKinnon ordered the parties to binding arbitration and expected the trains to resume operations within days in the “critically vital sector.”
The shutdown began just after midnight Thursday when the country’s two largest railway operators, Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC), locked out nearly 10,000 employees. The railway operators and Teamsters union had been negotiating a new labor contract for months without reaching an agreement.
A lengthy freight rail stoppage would impact economies beyond the Canadian borders. In 2022, the country exported $279 billion (C$380 billion) by rail. The US imports lumber, oil, and other resources used in the construction industry. Sixty percent of the $23 billion (C$31.8 billion) in lumber transported out of Canada in 2023 was by rail (Statistics Canada).
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Construction Starts Here™ at ConstructConnect, where our mission is to help the construction industry start every project on a solid foundation. A leading provider of software solutions for the preconstruction industry, ConstructConnect empowers commercial construction firms to streamline their workflows and maximize productivity. ConstructConnect operates as a business unit of Roper Technologies (Nasdaq: ROP), a constituent of the Nasdaq 100, S&P 500, and Fortune 1000.
About Marshall Benveniste
Marshall Benveniste is a writer and Senior Content Marketing Manager at ConstructConnect with the Economics Group. Marshall has written on various topics for the construction industry, including strategies for building product manufacturers, artificial intelligence in construction, and data-driven decision-making. Before joining ConstructConnect in 2021, Marshall spent 15 years in marketing communications for financial services and specialty construction firms. He holds a PhD in organizational management.
