The WTO’s appeals bench, which rules on top disputes, has been mothballed for over two years due to Trump-era blockages of adjudicator appointments. Under U.S. President Joe Biden, Washington has resisted calls by WTO members to approve appointments and has instead been leading negotiations on how to reboot the WTO’s dispute system.

“Our goal is a fully functioning (dispute system) by 2024,” deputy U.S. Trade Representative Maria Pagan told Reuters in her first public comments on the closed-door talks, saying Washington was “very committed” to reforms.

Asked whether it was possible to revive the Appellate Body, Pagan did not rule it out. “I think it needs a lot of revamping,” she said. The U.S. has criticized the WTO’s alleged overreach and lengthy processes and it has strongly contested some of its recent rulings against the United States.

The U.S.-led consultations with more than 70 countries over the past year have involved 12 reform themes expected to result in concrete proposals, Pagan said.

She declined to give details but suggested they would include alternatives to formal disputes such as mediation.

The appeals bench freeze means 24 WTO cases are stuck in legal purgatory because the losing party has appealed into a void.

WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has previously said the global trade body can reach deals on difficult topics like reform by its next major meeting (MC13) in early 2024, although Pagan said that might be too soon.

“We don’t view this as work that has to be done by MC13. But that does not mean that we’re not committed to working as quickly as we can on this because we are,” she said.

Some delegates have expressed disappointment with the U.S. engagement with the 28-year-old WTO, which it helped establish. Theycite Washington’s no-show at a key WTO meeting at Davos last week as an example. However, Pagan has refuted this, saying there was a scheduling clash.

WTO members agreed on the body’s first global trade rules reform in years last June which cut fish subsidies, but progress has stalled amid a dispute over who will chair talks. Pagan described the process as “frustrating” but said she was hopeful a breakthrough had been found, without elaborating.

— Emma Farge is a senior Reuters correspondent in Geneva; additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels.

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The 750-odd workers, represented by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) System Council 11, had agreed to take their dispute with CN to arbitration in early July, ending a 17-day strike.

CN on Oct. 11 said arbitration has concluded in a three-year collective agreement with IBEW, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2022 through to Dec. 31, 2024.

The agreement includes a three per cent wage increase for each of 2022, 2023 and 2024, Montreal-based CN said in a release.

IBEW members at CN install and maintain signals and trackside equipment, including the warning systems at railroad-highway crossings.

Unlike some other railway labour disputes in recent years — such as the eight-day strike by CN’s Teamster-led conductors and railyard workers in 2019 — the IBEW strike did not directly affect rail traffic, as CN had an “operational contingency plan” in place while unionized signals staff were off the job.

CN’s chief operating officer Rob Reilly, in the company’s release, said it’s “satisfied to have concluded this arbitration” and will “continue to focus on implementing a back-to-basics approach by running a scheduled operation, aligning capacity with demand.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The agreement puts a formal lid on the latest round of contract disputes between Calgary-based CP and its 3,000-odd unionized employees represented by the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC).

Those disputes peaked in a two-and-a-half-day work stoppage ending March 22, when the company and union agreed to go to binding arbitration to settle sticking points left unresolved in bargaining.

The new agreement, as laid out Monday by arbitrator William Kaplan, runs through to the end of 2023.

It provides wage increases of 3.5 per cent for each of 2022 and 2023, plus increases of three and 2.4 per cent to employees’ maximum disability and annual dental benefits respectively.

Kaplan’s binding decision was announced Monday after mediation on Friday and Saturday and a two-day hearing Sunday and Monday.

The arbitrator’s decision also calls for the TCRC to enter an agreement with CP on a pension improvement account (PIA) by the end of next month; the PIA would cover a six-year period ending Jan. 1, 2024 at the earliest.

The decision also updates the amount of time employees serving as union officials or reps can book for rest after taking leave to attend to union business.

CP CEO Keith Creel said Monday the company “welcomes the conclusion of arbitration and is pleased to have completed this agreement.”

TCRC brass, in a separate memo to its CP membership on Monday, said they would review Kaplan’s decisions and provide comments to local chairpersons and the membership “in the very near future.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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CN, in a statement Monday, said the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) System Council 11, which represents about 750 of the company’s employees across the country, had agreed to take its labour dispute to binding arbitration.

The strike is to end just after midnight ET Tuesday, and affected employees are to return to their jobs starting at 7 a.m. ET Wednesday, CN said.

Federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan, in a tweet Monday afternoon, thanked federal mediators for helping the company and union reach an agreement to end the strike.

CN, in Monday’s statement, also thanked “management employees and contractors” for working to allow railway operations to “continue uninterrupted” over the past two and a half weeks.

As of Monday afternoon the IBEW hasn’t yet made a statement about the strike ending, but said June 29 its members had been “substituted by replacement (scab) [sic] workers from both Canada and the U.S.”

That move “should concern everyone in our country, as it opens the door for unqualified people operating and maintaining our rail safety across Canada,” IBEW International vice-president Russ Shewchuk said in a June 29 statement.

IBEW members at CN install and maintain signals and trackside equipment, including the warning systems at railroad-highway crossings.

Shewchuk had called CN’s use of substitute workers “another prime example of the importance of federal anti-scab legislation (which would) prevent the employer from using replacement, and likely unqualified, workers.”

After IBEW members went on strike June 18, CN said its “operational contingency plan… allows the company to maintain a normal level of safe rail operations across Canada and serve its customers for as long as required.” The company had also said at the time it was open to binding arbitration if need be.

The most recent strike to halt CN rail service took place in 2019, when the company’s Teamster-led conductors and yard workers went on strike for eight days.

The IBEW’s previous five-year agreement with CN expired at the end of 2021.

After the two sides went to bargaining last fall, the railway “refused the union’s request for a fair and reasonable wage increase over a span of three years,” IBEW System Council 11 chairman Steve Martin said in a statement June 18.

Meanwhile, he said, the IBEW was “compromising on many union issues, and even acquiescing to company demands to increase the amount of interprovincial travel and the time a member spends away from their home and family.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan, attending labour talks between CP and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) in Calgary, announced Tuesday morning that the parties “have agreed to resolve their remaining collective agreement provisions through binding arbitration,” thus ending a work stoppage that began Sunday.

According to the TCRC, the dispute will be settled using the “final and binding” arbitration process, in which both parties agree to accept an appointed arbitrator’s decision as final.

Normal business operations are to resume Tuesday on CP lines and will continue during the arbitration period, O’Regan said, and at the end of the arbitration period, “a new collective agreement will be established.”

O’Regan hailed the outcome as “further evidence that when employers and unions work together, we get the best results for Canadians and for our economy” and thanked mediators from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service who “worked closely with the parties and have supported them throughout their negotiations.”

“The decision to agree to final and binding arbitration is not taken lightly,” TCRC spokesperson Dave Fulton said Tuesday morning. “While arbitration is not the preferred method, we were able to negotiate terms and conditions that were in the best interest of our members.”

CP, in a separate release Tuesday morning, said it “will immediately begin working with customers to resume normal train operations across Canada as soon as possible.”

CP service had halted just after midnight ET Sunday morning, after the company served the union with a lockout notice, saying it had received a strike notice from the union due to take effect at the same time.

Calgary-based CP and the TCRC, which represents about 3,000 CP workers, had been in talks toward a new collective bargaining agreement to replace a contract that expired at the end of 2021.

Disputes over issues including pensions, wages and benefits escalated after the TCRC announced that during a strike vote conducted in Feburary, its members had voted almost 97 per cent in favour of strike action.

While the effects of rail work stoppages on Western Canada’s grain, oilseed and pulse crop growers and handlers have been well documented in previous strikes and lockouts, a work stoppage this spring also stood to choke the feed supply lines for livestock feeders in the region, who have been relying on U.S. corn delivered by rail following last summer’s drought across the Prairies.

Fertilizer Canada executive vice-president Clyde Graham added Monday that due to “poor rail service leading into the spring season,” his group’s members in the fertilizer manufacturing and distrubution sectors were about two to three weeks backed up already on inventories and storage capacity at their plants.

Representatives from groups including Fertilizer Canada, the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, the National Cattle Feeders Association and Grain Growers of Canada were in Ottawa Monday to call on the federal government to pass back-to-work legislation to end the work stoppage. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Calgary-based CP and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), which represents about 3,000 CP workers across the country, have been in talks toward a new collective bargaining agreement to replace a contract that expired at the end of 2021.

Disputes over issues including pensions, wages and benefits escalated earlier this month when the TCRC announced its members had voted almost 97 per cent in favour of strike action.

A strike thus could have begun as early as Wednesday if the TCRC had served 72 hours’ notice beforehand, but CP instead took the first step Wednesday with its lockout notice.

The lockout will take effect “if the union leadership and the company are unable to come to a negotiated settlement or agree to binding arbitration,” the company said in a release.

CP “simply cannot prolong for weeks or months the uncertainty associated with a potential labour disruption,” CEO Keith Creel said in the same release.

“It was well known that CP was going to force a work stoppage and lock out our members. They have done just that,” TCRC spokesperson Dave Fulton said late Wednesday in a separate release.

During bargaining, he said, CP “continues to dismiss our members’ demands and are unwilling to negotiate the issues they have created.”

CP and Teamster brass have been meeting “daily” with federal mediators over the past week but “our positions remain far apart,” the company said.

Those talks led CP to make a new offer Tuesday which “addressed a total of 26 outstanding issues between the parties, including an offer to resolve the TCRC’s key issues of wages, benefits and pensions through final and binding arbitration,” but the Teamsters on Wednesday rejected that offer, the company said.

Instead, CP said, the TCRC “continues to table additional work rule demands” and has made “an even more onerous pension demand” which would “be even more destabilizing to the pension plan for all of CP’s unionized employees, not just the 10 percent who are TCRC members.”

The Teamsters, in a separate statement Tuesday about pension matters, countered that their request “is by no means unreasonable” and calls for what the union said would be its first pension cap increase in 10 years.

The union said its pension request “does not negatively impact other members of the plan or the overall sustainability of the plan. In fact, several other unions have already received pension improvements similar to our request.”

‘Terrible to catastrophic’

All that said, federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan on Wednesday said he and Transport Minister Omar Alghabra “are encouraged to see that both parties are still negotiating” and urge both parties to “consider making the compromises necessary to reach a deal that is fair for workers and the employer.”

O’Regan said he and Alghabra have said as much to the company and union directly, adding that the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service “remains with them at the table to assist them in their negotiations.”

O’Regan, in his statement, said the ministers “understand the impacts of a potential work stoppage and are monitoring the situation closely” but did not mention the possibility of ending the dispute through federal legislation.

The government, he said, “respects and has faith in the collective bargaining process, because we know that the best deals are the ones reached by the parties at the bargaining table.”

The Western Grain Elevators Association, which represents the Canadian Prairies’ major bulk grain handlers, said Tuesday it’s “imploring” CP and the TCRC to either reach a deal or agree to binding arbitration.

Otherwise, the WGEA said, it’s “imperative that the federal government step in and impose a process for a fair and reasonable resolution.”

“Despite this year’s 35 per cent smaller than average crop due to drought, the railways have struggled to meet even half of our weekly demands for rail service the past few months,” WGEA executive director Wade Sobkowich said in the group’s release Tuesday.

A work stoppage at CP now, he said, “would take the situation from terrible to catastrophic, crippling the flow of goods throughout the Canadian economy.”

Western Canada’s drought-dented feed grain supplies have also left the region’s livestock feeders more reliant on CP this year to rail U.S. corn into the region.

A railway work stoppage now “will devastate the livestock industry that is reliant on U.S. corn to feed over (one million) animals,” the Saskatchewan Stock Growers said on Twitter Wednesday following CP’s lockout notice.

Fertilizer Canada, in a separate statement last Friday, warned that about 75 per cent of all fertilizer produced and used in Canada is moved by rail, with “no other alternative transportation method that currently has capacity or can be brought online in time to mitigate the impact of the work stoppage.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Provincial Labour Minister Jean Boulet, at a meeting Thursday morning, put out a proposal to meat packer Olymel and the CSN-affiliated Syndicat des travailleurs d’Olymel Vallee-Jonction (STOVJ) to take the labour dispute to arbitration, and gave the parties until 5 p.m. to respond.

The union refused the proposal, Boulet said Thursday afternoon on Twitter, adding he would ask his appointed special mediator, Jean Poirier, to run a “blitz” of negotiations toward a negotiated agreement between now and Sunday.

Olymel had said Tuesday it would give its Vallee-Jonction hog plant’s workers until Sunday night to reconsider their rejection last week of an agreement in principle reached between the union and management.

Without a deal by then, the company said it will start the process to scrap the plant’s evening shift and lay off about half the plant’s 1,050 unionized workers by the end of the year.

STOVJ president Martin Maurice, in a separate statement Thursday, said the union favours negotiation over arbitration because it’s still convinced a new deal in principle can be negotiated in a short time frame.

The union told Boulet it would refuse arbitration because its members would “certainly not want a settlement imposed by an arbitrator after having spent nearly four months on strike.”

The STOVJ also called on Poirier to launch the negotiating blitz as soon as possible.

The idea of provincially-arranged arbitration to wrap up the Olymel strike had been suggested last week by critics with the provincial third opposition Parti Quebecois.

Olymel’s plant at Vallee-Jonction, about 60 km southeast of Quebec City, has been idle since the STOVJ went on strike April 28. The plant currently has capacity to process about 35,000 hogs per week.

Les Eleveurs de porcs du Quebec, the province’s hog producer group, last week estimated about 150,000 market-weight hogs were backed up on farms awaiting slaughter as a result.

The group said previously it has been working with Olymel to try and manage the backlog, by shipping animals to slaughter outside Quebec and/or selling off piglets to free up barn space. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The Parti Quebecois’ ag critic, Matane-Matapedia MNA Pascal Berube, and its labour critic, Jonquiere MNA Sylvain Gaudreault, made the pitch Friday, after workers from Olymel’s plant at Vallee-Jonction voted Tuesday to reject an agreement in principle reached between their union and plant management.

Following the vote, in which workers voted 57 per cent against the deal, Provincial Labour Minister Jean Boulet on Wednesday announced the appointment of a special mediator, Jean Poirier, to seek an end to the 16-week strike.

Having a new mediator is not enough as it will only prolong the dispute, Berube said in a release.

Citing estimates last week from the provincial hog farmers’ group les Eleveurs de porcs du Quebec, he said almost 150,000 market-weight hogs are now crammed in hot barns in “undignified and unacceptable” conditions.

“It’s a question of hours before farmers, under pressure and out of resources, are obligated to start euthanizing their animals.”

Boulet must propose arbitration to both the Syndicat des travailleurs d’Olymel Vallee-Jonction (STOVJ) and the company, Gaudreault said, but the minister also must assure his own “exemplary impartiality” in the matter.

The labour dispute at Vallee-Jonction — where Olymel has capacity to slaughter 35,000 hogs per week — “has gone on long enough,” the PQ said, and Quebecers must be able to foresee an end to it in the “very short term.”

Les Eleveurs de porcs du Quebec last week called for Premier Francois Legault to personally intervene to end the dispute.

Over 1,000 STOVJ-represented employees at the plant have been on strike since April 28, citing concerns over wages and working conditions. Their previous contract, which ended a strike in 2015, expired this year. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Bill C-29, introduced Tuesday in the House of Commons, cleared third reading in the Commons Wednesday and received three readings in the Senate and royal assent Friday.

The port’s longshore workers, represented by the Syndicat des debardeurs du port de Montreal (CUPE Local 375), undertook a part-time strike starting April 13, and expanded that to a full-time stoppage effective April 26.

The workers’ previous collective agreement expired at the end of December 2018; the union has described the main sticking point in talks as worker scheduling as it relates to “work/life balance.”

A strike doesn’t affect bulk grain traffic, which is protected under the federal Labour Code, it does affect export movement of containerized crops, such as pulses and special crops, as well as imports of goods such as fertilizer.

Federal Labour Minister Filomena Tassi, in introducing C-29 on Tuesday, billed it as the government’s “least desired course of action.”

The bill, she said at the time, would also set up a “neutral mediation-arbitration process to resolve the issues in dispute between the parties and conclude a new collective agreement,” she said, emphasizing the government “is not taking sides.”

Tassi had also said C-29 does not prevent the union and Maritime Employers Association (MEA), which represents port terminal companies, from “concluding an agreement on their own terms at any point in this process.”

Pulse Canada, which among other crops sector groups had pressed Ottawa to ward off a work stoppage, said Friday the pulse industry “welcomes the end of the strike” at the port and thanked MPs and senators who voted for C-29’s passage.

However, Pulse Canada president Greg Cherewyk said the group “encourages both parties to reach a permanent agreement as quickly as possible in order to provide certainty to containerized shipping in Canada.”

Cherewyk described the port work stoppage as “the latest example of the vulnerability of Canada’s supply chains” and said Pulse Canada seeks “a national conversation on supply chain resiliency” including shippers, government and other stakeholders.

CUPE on Friday ripped C-29 as “unconstitutional, as it infringes fundamental rights protected by the Charter” and said it would challenge the bill in court.

In a release, the union said the MEA “walked away from the bargaining table April 27, once it was clear the Trudeau government would give them their wish of legislating their employees back to work.”

CUPE national president Mark Hancock said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “just sent a loud and clear message to every employer in the country: don’t bother bargaining in good faith with your workers, because if things get tough, we’ll be there to bail you out.”

CUPE national secretary-treasurer Charles Fleury, in the same release, credited the federal New Democrats and party leader Jagmeet Singh “for successfully amending this bill to take away some of its worst elements.”

The NDP, in a separate release Thursday, said Trudeau and Tassi “are going to dispose of an inconvenient labour dispute and undermine fundamental Canadian labour rights along the way.” –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Federal Labour Minister Filomena Tassi announced Friday that the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 375, Syndicat des debardeurs and the port’s Maritime Employers Association (MEA) have “concluded a truce agreement.”

The union, which represents about 1,150 longshoremen and longshorewomen loading and unloading ships at the port, on Aug. 10 launched what it described at the time as an “indefinite” strike following a series of intermittent work stoppages.

Following calls to the parties earlier this week, Tassi said, she directed Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services to put forward a proposed truce agreement for their consideration, in which both sides “pause and pursue the negotiation process while operations resume” at the port.

The two parties “will work under (the truce’s) parameters as they negotiate a new contract,” she said Friday in a statement, adding she and Transport Minister Marc Garneau “strongly encourage both parties to fully use this opportunity to reach an agreement.”

CUPE 375, in a separate release Friday, said the two sides are “confident that they will be able to reach a negotiated agreement in principle by the end of the truce on March 20, 2021.”

The parties have also reached a “mutual agreement” in which they’ll be able to turn to arbitration at the end of the truce if “certain points remain in dispute.”

The unionized workers’ previous collective agreement expired at the end of December 2018; the union has described the main sticking point in talks as worker scheduling, as it relates to “work/life balance.”

CUPE 375 said Friday that a meeting to set up a “return-to-work protocol” is scheduled for Saturday and the port will be operational again starting at 7 a.m. ET Sunday.

The MEA, in a separate statement Friday, said the truce is to take effect immediately. “Starting today, no pressure tactics will be exercised, while both parties will concentrate on negotiations in order to come to an agreement,” the association said.

Montreal’s port authority warned at the strike’s onset that an open-ended work stoppage would “create long delays in handling goods for Canadian companies, especially exporters” and “oblige many export companies to lease warehouses or choose a different supply chain, if they are unable to move their goods internationally out of the Port of Montreal.”

The strike, it said, could also lead international shipping firms “to re-route certain vessels, sometimes to competing U.S. ports, resulting in higher costs for businesses and, ultimately, consumers.”

The strike didn’t affect bulk grain traffic through the port, which runs through Viterra’s 262,000-tonne capacity grain terminal. The federal Labour Code calls for port workers during a strike or lockout to “continue to provide the services they normally provide” for loading, tie-up, let-go and movement of grain vessels in and out of port.

However, the strike did affect traffic through Montreal’s container terminals — including the CanEst Transit terminal, devoted to storage, cleaning, sifting, packing and loading of agricultural products.

The CanEst terminal, whose ownership group includes Quebec ag co-operative Sollio and Regina pulse and durum processor AGT, loads about 200 containers per day. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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