BC Port Strike Enters 4th Day As Talks Stall Between Union and Employers

Cargo containers are unloaded from the Maersk Stockholm ship with gantry cranes while docked in Vancouver on April 25, 2023. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

Talks have stalled between the union representing thousands of B.C. port workers who began striking over the Canada Day long weekend and the group representing their employers, with both sides calling each other unreasonable in their negotiations.

The stall sends the strike into its fourth day after port workers initially walked off the job on July 1, causing business groups across Canada to raise alarm about the strike’s potential economic impact.

The strike involving more than 7,400 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada (ILWU) began after federally regulated talks between the union and the BC Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA), which represents almost 50 of B.C.’s private-sector waterfront employers, failed to yield a resolution on a new labour agreement.

The union and the BCMEA had been in talks since February in an attempt renew the industry-wide collective agreement, which expired in March.

The union says its main negotiating objectives are stopping the “erosion” of its members’ work through companies contracting out, protecting “current and future generations from the devastating impacts of port automation,” and giving port workers a pay raise in the face of high inflation and rising living costs.

The union has accused the BCMEA of demanding “major concessions” throughout the negotiation process and attempting to “take away rights and conditions from longshore workers.”

However, BCMEA has said it has been offering “reasonable proposals and positions in good faith” to ILWU, but says the union seems to have decided against working toward “an equitable deal.”

“Rather than work towards an equitable deal, ILWU Canada seems to have entrenched their positions. The BCMEA has gone as far as possible on core issues,” the association said in a press release on July 3.

‘Significant Impacts’

With regard to the union’s calls for less contracting out, BCMEA said the ILWU is trying to “aggressively expand” its scope by attempting to “re-define Regular Maintenance Work far beyond what is set out in the industry-wide agreement, which has been legally well established for decades.”

“Changing this definition would result in immediate and significant impacts to terminal operations,” it said.

BMCEA also said the union’s proposals on pay raises for its members are “unreasonable,” while the union has not publicly outlined how much of an increase it is seeking.

Union president Rob Ashton said on July 3 that BCMEA members have seen “record high profits for many years now and especially during the pandemic,” and that ILWU members should receive a share.

“The government gave a 7% increase to the minimum wage, recognizing the high cost of living,” Ashton offered as an example in a press release.

Business groups across the country have called on the federal government to wade into the dispute by introducing back-to-work legislation.

“One day is too long for this strike,” Robin Guy, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s deputy leader of government relations, told The Canadian Press on July 1.

“The longer it goes on, the more damage we’re going to see to the Canadian economy.”

The union, however, has asked Ottawa not to intervene.

“If the (BCMEA) gets their way, and their way is to let the government make this collective agreement for them, there will never be labour peace on the waterfront,” Ashton said.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.