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Canada's two largest freight rail networks could come to a grinding halt on Thursday as thousands of employees are threatening to go on strike over working conditions. Industry groups and associations say a strike would have a devastating impact on businesses, both in Canada and in the U.S. NPR's Jackie Northam reports.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Negotiations have been going on for months between the Teamsters union and Canada's two key rail networks, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City. Unless there's some breakthrough in the next few hours, more than 9,000 engineers, conductors and dispatchers will walk. Jonathan Abecassis, a spokesperson with CN - or Canadian National Railway - says the strike will affect many more workers than that.
JONATHAN ABECASSIS: We have other employees that depend on trains moving to be able to do their work. They require containers to be moved to be able to offload them. And further than that, if you look at how many businesses, how many industries rely on rail to be able to move goods and power the economy, that number becomes even more staggering.
NORTHAM: Rail lines are critical for moving goods across Canada, but more than half of the country's exports to the U.S. also travel by rail, most of it on CN and CPKC freight trains.
CLARENCE WOUDSMA: Both of those railway carriers are very much integrated into the U.S. as well. What they like to advertise - they are coast to coast to coast, and they mean down to the Gulf of Mexico as well.
NORTHAM: Clarence Woudsma is a professor at the University of Waterloo's School of Planning, specializing in transportation logistics. He says the rail lines move key resources across the borders.
WOUDSMA: So you're thinking of oil and gas, coal, potash, bulk commodities which, historically, the railways have specialized in moving and, obviously, from a cost-effective standpoint.
NORTHAM: Danny Munch, an economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, says a Canadian rail strike could have a serious impact on U.S. agriculture. For example, he says 85% of the fertilizer trade between the U.S. and Canada moves by rail.
DANNY MUNCH: Trucking is much more expensive. That adds expense to farmers and really will create delays and shortages as we look at, you know, the fall season when some farmers apply fertilizers.
NORTHAM: Given the long lead-up time during negotiations, many businesses already started making plans for a strike, says Lisa DeNight with Newmark, a global commercial real estate service.
LISA DENIGHT: There has been a significant movement in recent days to not bring customers' seaborne cargo into Canadian ports and instead divert to U.S. western ports - Seattle and Southern California, for example.
NORTHAM: There's about $3 billion of trade between the U.S. and Canada each day, says Pascal Chan with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He says there already have been major labor disruptions at ports in western and eastern Canada and that Canada runs the risk of being seen as an unreliable partner.
PASCAL CHAN: This is another labor disruption that, from our perspective, jeopardizes that relationship with our largest trading partner and closest ally.
NORTHAM: Canada's finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, called on both sides to strike a deal fast.
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CHRYSTIA FREELAND: The country has no patience with dilly-dallying right now. They can achieve a deal. They need to get a deal done.
NORTHAM: Economists say that it will take three to five days to recover for every day of a shutdown if the rail strike goes ahead.
Jackie Northam, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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