Teamsters end strike against CN Railway

Teamsters end strike against CN Railway    A strike by 1,700 locomotive engineers against Canadian National Railway ended Wednesday with the railroad and Teamsters Canada Rail conference agreeing to resolve their contractual disagreements through further negotiations and, if necessary, binding arbitration.
   The union began its strike Nov. 28.
   CN and the TCRC have agreed to continue negotiations to resolve all issues related to wages, benefits and work rules. If there is no agreement, the parties’ wages and benefits offers will be subject to final, binding arbitration.
   As part of this process, CN will roll back the monthly mileage cap for locomotive engineers to the previous 3,800 miles from the 4,300-mile cap initiated Nov. 28, and withdraw its plan to apply a 1.5 percent wage increase to TCRC members. The union’s current contract expired Dec. 31, 2008.
   Teamsters Canada President Daniel Shewchuk said the engineers would get back to work as quickly as possible, but didn’t provide a timeline. The agreement came after the federal government introduced legislation Monday to end the strike, which was to have been debated Wednesday evening.
   Managers have been running the trains since the walkout began.