Canada's Unifor and CN Rail fail to reach labor agreement

(Reuters) - Unifor, Canada's largest private sector workers' union, said it was unable to reach agreement with Canadian National Railway Co after months of negotiations. Unifor, which has five collective agreements with CN Rail, had opened talks in September on contracts for about 5,000 workers across the country. "There was some progress made over the week, but there have been several stumbling blocks on non-economic issues that prevent the talks from going forward," Unifor said in a statement. Unifor and CN Rail are to schedule future meetings in January to continue the negotiations. "CN remains optimistic that it can reach an agreement with Unifor in the near term," CN rail spokesman Mark Hallman said in an email. (Reporting by Darshana Sankararaman in Bengaluru and Euan Rocha in Toronto; Editing by Joyjeet Das and Steve Orlofsky)