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CN’s 4,800 Unifor members faced being locked out at 11 p.m. Monday, until the union and the country’s biggest railway reached an 11th-hour agreement.

But the dispute was less about wages than it was about politics.

Unifor’s president, Jerry Dias, has insisted on extracting money from CN for every member to go into a political action fund. Mr. Dias, a 1970s-style union firebrand, has made no secret of the fact he intends to try to bring down what he has called “the most corrupt government in the history of Canada.”

CN’s chief executive, Claude Mongeau, says his company will not pay money to a political fund on a point of principle. There may well be principle involved but CN is also keen to remain onside with a government that could pile more cost on through regulation. The Conservatives are reviewing the Canada Transportation Act, the framework legislation for all modes of transport, and rail is being looked at in light of the trouble moving grain harvests last year to ports on the West Coast for shipment to Asia. CN’s greatest fear is the government will grant shippers the right to levy penalties on it every time the company fails to meet the terms of its service agreements.

The company was fined $100,000 for violations of the Fair Rail for Grain Farmers Act last year.

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Mr. Mongeau is hoping the government responds in the manner of the old Sanskrit proverb, the enemy of mine enemy is my friend. He certainly seems to have the facts in his favour. CN says it reached a tentative agreement on nearly all employee-related matters late last year, before the union introduced the demand that the company make a cash contribution to support the political and community action fund — a demand CN says it found unacceptable because it allowed financial matters related to the union to take precedence over the interests of its employees.