Trudeau ‘Dismayed’ at BC Port Union’s ‘Unacceptable’ Decision to Reject Deal

Gantry cranes sit idle as a container ship is docked at port during a work stoppage, in Vancouver, on July 19, 2023. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government is “dismayed“ that an agreement to end the job action at British Columbia’s ports was rejected by the longshore union leadership.

Trudeau said Thursday that the union caucus’s decision to reject a federal mediator’s tentative deal that was agreed to at the bargaining table, putting them back in strike position, is “unacceptable.”

“The impact on workers, on families, on businesses right across the country of this prolonged strike has been significant,” he said while speaking in Belleville, Ont.

The stability of work at B.C. ports, key West Coast gateways for imports and exports, has been up in the air since the leadership caucus of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada rejected the mediator’s terms on Tuesday, briefly sending workers back to picket lines.

That move was ruled illegal by the Canada Industrial Relations Board, which led the union to issue a new 72-hour strike notice on Wednesday, only to rescind that order hours later.

The union, which represents about 7,400 port workers, has said that its caucus didn’t think the tentative deal “had the ability to protect our jobs now or into the future,” and it asked to return to the bargaining table. It also promised to appeal the industrial relations board’s ruling.

Trudeau convened a meeting of the government’s incident response group on Wednesday, a move reserved for crisis situations.

The prime minister said the government needs to make sure people have faith in the collective bargaining process.

“We always know that the best deals are always found through negotiations at the bargaining table and that’s what we’re focused on,” he said.

“But we also know that this strike could not continue and we’re glad to see that the union is reconsidering the good offer that was on the table and the agreement that was … accepted by both union leadership and management.”

The strike originally started on Canada Day and ran for 13 days, shutting down or severely disrupting operations at the more than 30 B.C. port terminals and other sites where union members work, freezing billions of dollars worth of products in place.