Union calls on Ottawa to help laid-off port workers in Churchill

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This article was published 30/08/2016 (3320 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Laid-off workers at the troubled Port of Churchill called on the federal government for help on Tuesday.

The Union of Canadian Transportation Employees, which represents about 100 people who lost their jobs last month, asked Ottawa to cut them a break and relax employment insurance rules.

Omnitrax Canada, which owns the Arctic seaport and the Hudson Bay Railway, issued layoff notices for the port’s entire workforce and announced it was cutting rail freight service in half, to a single train per week.

Because of the Arctic location, most of the workers don’t have sufficient hours to qualify for EI, union spokeswoman Teresa Eschuk said, adding Ottawa has addressed the same problem elsewhere with “blanket zones.”

“Designating Churchill an EI zone — similar to the 12 zones across Canada that the Liberals have already applied this status to — will make it easier for unemployed Churchill workers to meet the requirements for benefits and receive them for a longer period of time.”

Employment insurance benefits normally kick in after 14 weeks work in Churchill; the union wants a pass on that since workers were laid off part-way through the shipping season.

As an example of an EI zone, workers in Alberta’s oil patch got help earlier this year when Ottawa extended the normal 52 week maximum benefit period to 70 weeks.

In Churchill’s case, the issue is the number of weeks it takes to qualify for help. Right now 14 weeks is the same for seasonal and northern workers in Nunavut and parts of eastern Canada as it is in northern Manitoba.

Eschuk, the union’s regional vice-president, said the union is frustrated that hasn’t been able to make its request directly.

“Neither level of government will meet with us,” she said.

Grain shipments though the Canada’s only arctic seaport have been redirected, taking Hudson Bay off cargo shipping route.

The federal government sold the port and its rail line to Colorado based rail company Omnitrax in 1997.

“We have been told that we are not stakeholders in the process and so there is no need to meet with us,” said Marianne Hladum, the union’s senior official on the Prairies. “We represent these workers. If 10 per cent of a community’s population is not a stakeholder, then who is?”

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca