Federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon is forcing the reopening of shipping ports by ordering the Canada Industrial Relations Board to impose binding arbitration on labour disputes in British Columbia and Quebec.
Union leaders in British Columbia say they will fight Ottawa’s intervention through a court challenge. But business groups say Canada’s reputation as a reliable trading partner has been tarnished, given the persistent work stoppages at Canadian ports that they say are costing hundreds of millions of dollars a day.
This is the second time Mr. MacKinnon has issued a directive to impose binding arbitration. He used the same method to end lockouts at Canada’s two largest railways this past summer, a move that the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference is challenging at the Federal Court of Appeal.
The decision on Tuesday by Mr. MacKinnon will affect four B.C. ports, the Port of Montreal and the Port of Quebec. Business groups had tried to persuade the federal Liberal government to introduce back-to-work legislation, but Ottawa resisted going that far.
“I’ve directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order that all operations and duties at the ports resume, and to assist the parties in settling their collective agreements by imposing final and binding arbitration,” Mr. MacKinnon said during a news conference in Ottawa.
Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon announced the binding arbitration measure to reopen ports in B.C. and Montreal at a news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Peter Hall, professor of urban studies at Simon Fraser University, said Canada’s international image in the shipping industry has taken a hit with recent lockouts, but there also have been labour disruptions at U.S. ports.
He cautioned that long-term labour peace at Canadian ports will remain elusive until contentious issues such as semi-automation at the Port of Vancouver are resolved. “If you order them back to work and then you don’t follow through with something to try and look at the underlying issues, that’s a problem,” Prof. Hall said in an interview.
The BC Maritime Employers Association locked out about 730 ship and dock forepersons on Nov. 4, hours after the union started what it called limited strike action that included a ban on overtime. Members of Local 514 of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Canada are the locked-out supervisors of 7,400 rank-and-file ILWU workers.
“We will fight the arbitrated forced contract in the courts,” Local 514 president Frank Morena said in a statement.
“Federal Minister MacKinnon and the Liberal government have sided with big business against workers and this will not be forgotten or forgiven.”
The previous five-year collective agreement at Local 514 expired on March 31, 2023.
The Greater Vancouver Board of Trade has revived its “port shutdown calculator,” displaying an electronic tally of the value of trade disrupted, rising each second. On Tuesday night, the calculator showed that about $6.5-billion of cargo had been affected at West Coast ports, based on an estimated impact of $800-million a day.
Opinion: We must do something about the frequent labour disruptions harming Canada
Nationally, over the past two years alone, a series of work stoppages has hit Canada’s supply chain, including last year at the St. Lawrence Seaway and this year at the Port of Montreal, where a lockout began on Sunday night.
Jonathan Abecassis, a spokesman for Montreal-based Canadian National Railway Co., said the freight hauler is working with its partners toward a recovery in service once the labour conflict is officially over.
Jean-Daniel Tardif, the Canada Industrial Relations Board’s director of dispute resolution services, said the minister’s orders are being treated as the highest priority but declined to say when a back-to-work order will be issued.
The Montreal Port Authority said cargo handling will gradually resume in the coming days, depending on the labour board’s decision. The port said it will take several weeks to clear the backlog of containers and restore normal operations.
For exporters, the end to the lockouts cannot come soon enough, and the lost revenue is gone for good.
Richard Smibert, president of Ontario soybean exporter London Agricultural Commodities Inc., welcomed the minister’s move. But he said the protracted dispute forced the company to close its Thamesville processing plant a week ago because the railways stopped taking deliveries of grain containers. It is not clear when business will return to normal, he said.
“We’re at the point where we’re going to have to lay off employees,” Mr. Smibert said. “Our customers overseas are very unhappy with our inability to supply. They see us as an unreliable source for their soybeans and for their food products because of the ongoing labour problems in Canada – our railroads, our ports.”
Mr. Smibert estimates the lockout at Vancouver cost his company $20,000 a day in sales. “We can’t recover that,” he said.
Dwight Gerling, owner of DG Global, figures the port disputes cost him $2.5-million a day and counting. In normal times, DG Global ships about 200 containers a day of soybeans, lentils and other food-grade grain to 60 countries from Vancouver, Montreal and U.S. ports.
The lengthy disputes at the ports combined with the railway lockouts have cost his company at least one large Asian buyer, a food processor that said it could no longer endure the volatility of Canadian supplies.
People picket in front of the International Longshorman’s Association’s office in Montreal on Monday, after workers were locked out on Sunday night.Andrej Ivanov/The Globe and Mail
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said it is relieved that Ottawa intervened. “We cannot have work stoppages paralyze Canada’s supply chains every time negotiations are at an impasse,” Jasmin Guénette, the group’s vice-president of national affairs, said in a news release.
At Quebec City’s port, a conflict between dock workers and their employer over work schedules and other matters has been dragging on for more than two years.
The 81 employees were locked out in September, 2022, and replacement workers have taken over. The province of Quebec has anti-scab legislation but ports are under federal authority, which means their presence is legal for now. The federal government recently passed legislation to ban replacement workers across the country, which takes effect next year.
The Trudeau government has been reluctant in the past to force an end to labour disputes, preferring to put its faith in the collective bargaining process. But Mr. MacKinnon said federal mediators saw no path forward in the port disputes, adding that when he tried to reset faltering talks in Montreal by proposing to appoint a special mediator, the two sides couldn’t even agree on that.
“It is my duty and responsibility to secure industrial peace in the national interest,” Mr. MacKinnon said. “Canadians have limited tolerance right now for economic self-harm.”
Unions on Tuesday criticized Ottawa for being heavy-handed, accusing the government of caving into corporate pressure and destabilizing labour relations.
“Government is bailing out employers who don’t want to meaningfully bargain,” Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said in an interview. She said the result is likely to be forced deals that neither side is happy with in the long run.