Labour negotiations between Canada’s two major railways – CN and CPKC – and the train workers’ union, Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, have been going on for months. Last week, they hit a wall and freight service shut down across the country. Less than 24 hours later, the federal government intervened, ordering workers back. But the dispute still hasn’t been resolved. Bruce Curran, associate professor in the faculty of law at the University of Manitoba, explains where things stand in the labour dispute, what it’s ultimately about, and how the federal government might have prevented it from happening in the first place.