21 December 2008
Hatters Hit by CPR Cuts
Medicine Hat Alberta - Close to 10 percent of the 600
unionized CP Rail workers temporarily laid off across Canada this week are from the Medicine Hat area.
"There are approximately 50 employees in the Medicine Hat area affected by the layoffs," CPR Calgary-based
media spokesperson Breanne Feigel told the News Friday.
"It's a temporary situation due to reduced customer volumes because of the downturn in the economy."
Feigel stressed, however, that the laid-off employees will return to work as soon as customer volumes increase, which the
CPR anticipates will happen early in 2009.
Alberta will see approximately 100 affected employees in Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, Calgary, and Edmonton.
The workers are a mixture of train operators, mechanical, and maintenance workers, and a handful from the track maintenance team.
The hardest hit by the layoffs, however, is in the interior of B.C. where some 300 workers have been temporarily laid off in the
Cranbrook-Revelstoke area.
In addition to the 600 layoffs from the company's workforce, CPR also announced a hiring freeze at the management level.
Business expense restrictions have also been implemented.
Teamsters Canada and the Canadian Auto Workers, however, claimed that CP Rail was putting profits ahead of public safety by laying off
600 unionized workers just as winter weather creates hazardous conditions and increased derailments.
"As winter begins and layoff notices go out, CP Rail alone has reported 25 derailments involving over 120 cars and engines to the
Transportation Safety Board in the past month alone," said William Brehl, president of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference,
Maintenance of Way Employees Division, and a member of Transport Canada's Advisory Council on Railway Safety, in a press release.
The Teamsters represent more than 4,000 maintenance of way workers at CP Rail.
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