WINDSOR — The Ambassador Bridge in Windsor and Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia are not reporting any delays as front-line customs officers went back to their posts this morning.

CBC News reports that the officers are back on the job and commercial traffic is moving at a normal pace one day after the workers staged a one-day walkout at several border crossings in southwestern Ontario.

According to Ron Moran, national president of the Customs Excise Union who’s representing 5,000 front-line Customs and Border Services Agency workers, officers took the day off because they fear for their safety. The union has been lobbying for years that officers should be armed like their US counterparts.

“Our members exercised this right in part because they don’t trust the armed and dangerous lookout system, which is critically flawed in that it repeatedly fails to identify armed and dangerous felons as such,” he said in a press release yesterday.

Moran was reacting to the government’s slow response to a senate report this summer that recommended Ottawa arm many of its 8,300 customs staff, who only carry only batons and pepper spray.

Traffic was delayed for hours at the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, the Ambassador Bridge, and the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron-Sarnia.

Labour officers have been called in to investigate the work refusal, CBC reports.

— with files from CBC News