A ship sails past the Port of Montreal in Montreal on Nov. 14.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Dock supervisors in British Columbia are resuming their duties after the federal government forced ports to reopen, but unions on the West Coast and in Montreal are opposing Ottawa’s intervention.
Unionized employees with night shifts on Thursday returned to their posts in B.C., two days after federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon invoked his authority under Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to end the lockouts and impose binding arbitration.
About 730 B.C. forepersons belonging to Local 514 of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Canada and 1,200 workers at the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) at the Port of Montreal had been locked out. Employees in Montreal are expected to return to work by this weekend.
Mr. MacKinnon directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to extend terms of the existing contracts until new ones are reached. The work stoppages hurt supply chains, caused widespread economic harm and damaged Canada’s reputation as a steady trading partner, he said.
The two unions say they will each challenge Ottawa’s intervention.
In the latest dispute at four B.C. ports, the BC Maritime Employers Association locked out ship and dock forepersons on Nov. 4, shortly after the union started what it called limited strike action that included a ban on working overtime. More than 30 terminals were affected in the Vancouver region, Prince Rupert in Northern B.C. and the Vancouver Island communities of Nanaimo and Port Alberni.
B.C. employers offered what amounts to a compounded wage increase of 19.2 per cent over four years, which would result in median compensation for forepersons rising to $293,617 annually, including overtime and shift premiums but excluding benefits and pension. The current median compensation is $246,323 a year, according to B.C. employers.
Local 514 president Frank Morena said the union in B.C. will launch a court challenge to fight Mr. MacKinnon’s order, while CUPE is raising its concerns directly with the labour board.
This is the second time Mr. MacKinnon has issued a directive to impose binding arbitration. He used the same method to end work stoppages at Canada’s two largest railways in August, a move that the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference is challenging at the Federal Court of Appeal.
Teamsters Canada said that without the right to bargain, unions lose leverage to negotiate better wages and safer working conditions.
“Unions will fight this to the end,” François Laporte, national president of Teamsters Canada, said in a statement this week. “Canada is a strong country, and the idea that we are supposedly one strike or lockout away from economic collapse is a baseless narrative.”
But business groups such as the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade welcomed the federal government’s intervention. “We need stability in our supply chains to drive economic growth and create well-paying jobs,” board president Bridgitte Anderson said in a statement after Mr. MacKinnon’s announcement on Tuesday.
The board has revived its “port shutdown calculator,” displaying an electronic tally of the value of trade disrupted, rising each second. Late Thursday afternoon, the calculator showed that nearly $8-billion of cargo had been affected at West Coast ports, based on an estimated impact of $800-million a day.
During last year’s two-week strike at B.C. ports by 7,400 rank-and-file longshore workers, the calculator showed that $10.7-billion of cargo had been disrupted.
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, which oversees Canada’s largest port, has been experiencing shipping congestion during the latest labour conflict. Ships at anchor remained a common sight at the Port of Vancouver on Thursday, with vessels unable to quickly find a berth time slot.
All container terminals, which handle both imports and exports, and most other facilities at B.C. ports were closed during the lockout. Only a handful of operations stayed open, such as sites for exporting coal, heavy oil and bulk grain.
In April, the federal government appointed veteran mediator Vince Ready to head an industrial inquiry commission into conflicts at B.C. ports. A final report is scheduled to be delivered to Mr. MacKinnon in the spring of 2025, including recommendations for any potential changes to the Canada Labour Code and how to implement them.
With a report from Nicolas Van Praet