OTTAWA (Reuters) – A federal judge in Canada has ruled that Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd was in contempt of court for forcing train crews to work excessively long hours in violation of a court order, the Teamsters Canada union said on Wednesday.
The penalties will be determined in a separate hearing, the union said in a statement.
A spokesman for the company said it disagreed with the decision and would be filing an appeal.
The Teamsters union had argued that the company should face contempt fines for making its conductors and locomotive engineers stay late despite an arbitrator’s decision that duty ended when their shifts did.
The case was filed in 2019. In March of this year, a U.S. regulator approved Canadian Pacific’s $31 billion acquisition of railroad company Kansas City Southern to create Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Ismail Shakil; Editing by Mark Porter)
