Ships off the Westshore still have no port to go to: feds force workers back to the docks

If you are a vessel tracker or a reader who has submitted a photo of a ship to The Westshore, you may have noticed the fully laden Ever Steady, Marcos V, MSC Sofia Paz, and the Conti Contessa anchored offshore beyond Colwood this weekend. The ships are unable to unload their cargo because dock foremen at their mutual destination of Vancouver are locked out of their posts. The dispute has caused a shutdown at docks in Victoria and Nanaimo, Prince Rupert, and a partial shutdown in Montreal.

The Port of Vancouver and its supply-chain partners move roughly $300 billion in cargo a year. Since last week, the lockout shut down all container cargo activity in the Vancouver port, which is why people in Victoria, Esquimalt, Colwood, View Royal, and Sooke are seeing heavily loaded vessels anchored in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Local (ILWU) 514 issued a limited strike notice on Nov. 4, based mainly on an overtime ban. They have been locked out by their employer, the BC Maritime Employers Association (BMEA) since.

In the face of an impasse between the parties over the weekend, Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon issued a directive to resolve the dispute by sending negotiations to binding arbitration. On Tuesday, MacKinnon announced in a statement that he had, under section 107 of the labour code, directed the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to order the “resumption of all operations and functions at the ports and to extend the terms of existing collective agreements until new ones are reached.”

On Oct. 30, before the impasse, the BC Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) made an offer of an increase in compensation to $293K, a lump sum payment of $21K, and enhanced retirement benefits to workers on Oct 30.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Local 514, representing approximately 730 unionized dock foremen, has been demanding, since last Saturday, that port owners negotiate over the imminent automation processes, which they feel threaten their job security. While the port in Vancouver is still officially open, terminals for the automotive and cargo sectors have not been operational.

Automated ports use advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, that manage the movement of containers within a terminal, reducing time and cost in the handling process. Today, roughly 71 terminals around the world operate under some degree of automation. The question for the union workers is whether they will be allowed to work with technologies that lend efficiency to their jobs or if, for the sake of efficiency, they will be replaced by fully digitized and automated logistics systems.

“The BCMEA only wants to increase its profits. If they were interested in Canadian workers and our economy, they’d be happy to share those profits with Canadian workers,” John Henry Harter, a labour studies professor at Simon Fraser University, said in an interview with CBC Radio.

How long has automation been a concern for workers?

The pathway to this recent stalemate was a long time in coming.

The dispute over port automation and its impact on unionized workers has been brewing since a 13-day strike in July 2023. Thirty BC port terminals were affected and 7K workers were out on strike arguing for increased wages, pensions, and job protection against automation. The previous agreement reached between employers and Local 514 expired last March 31. ILWU Local 514 says the BCMEA ended talks mandated by the feds with a mediator less than an hour after they began late Saturday afternoon.

The BC Maritime Employers Association has argued that the union had advanced warning of the automation and have been negotiating in bad faith. The process of automation has been happening for years in major ports around the world. Singapore’s is the largest automated port. Barcelona’s and Hamburg’s ports are automated as are China’s Nansha port in Guangzhou province and Guangdong Hong Kong-Macau ports.

At an event hosted last Thursday by the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, the CEO and president of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority Peter Xotta said, “Those investments (in automation) are actually about preserving our position in the global supply chain, which ultimately is beneficial to those that are employed on the terminal.”

What is at stake for the economy if the lockout goes on?

A money counter on the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade’s (GVBOT) website continuously calculates the value of trade disrupted since the dispute began. According to its algorithm, $6.4 billion in trade had been interrupted— roughly $800 million per day. The counter does not estimate the economic impact of the dispute domestically. The GVBOT site also says Canadian rail companies have publicly stated that every day of stoppage results in three to five days of recovery.

In a post to X on Nov. 7, the GVBOT said “Every hour the work stoppage continues, is another blow to Canadian businesses, consumers, and people from coast to coast.”

Some shipping companies have begun to reroute their cargo to Seattle, Oakland, and Los Angeles.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told parliamentarians last Thursday that, “In their [dock foremen and BC Maritime Employers Association] disagreements, they are hurting Canadians, workers, farmers, union members right across the country.”

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business had called on Trudeau to implement binding arbitration to legislate the longshoremen to return to work.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh visited locked-out workers last Friday to show his support for the union. In recent labour disputes involving airline pilots and rail workers, the NDP leader has been vociferous in his opposition to back-to-work legislation.

The right to strike is protected in the Canadian Constitution, making federal intervention difficult but not impossible. In 2018, Trudeau legislated postal workers back to work. At the time, the Public Alliance of Canada said the move stripped workers of their right to be represented by their unions. In August, rail workers in Canada launched a court challenge to rulings by the industrial labor board that forced them back to work based on a 2015 Supreme Court ruling in the case Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v. Saskatchewan that workers have the protected, constitutional right in Canada to strike and be represented by their unions.

The dockworkers could do the same.

Over the weekend, Local 514 President Frank Morena said that the union is “calling on the actual individual employers who run the terminals to order their bargaining agent—the BCMEA—to get back to the table.” That didn’t work.

On Monday, the minister moved

On Monday, MacKinnon, who has been critical over social media of the lack of progress in the dispute, said both the port employers and the union representing more than 700 longshore supervisors “must understand the urgency of the situation.”  And that “Canadians are counting on them.”

He warned that thousands of Canadians could be laid off if the dispute continues, weeks before Christmas.

According to MacKinnon, farmers, small businesses, manufacturers, and retailers in BC have already been impacted by the lockout. As the lockout goes on, vessels have begun to cluster in Vancouver and outside Victoria.

Victoria is no cargo port

In terms of marine logistics and shipping to the CRD, a spokesperson for the Victoria Port Authority told Capital Daily, “We're not a cargo port here. It's primarily a cruise ship terminal. The cruise season ended for us on the 30th of October. We had two vessels that departed the day before the lockout began. That was when the last ships [that] came in, so we have seen only minimal impact.”

The fear is, if not resolved, the lockout could impact regional store owners and vendors in advance of the Christmas shopping season.

Last Thursday, prior to MacKinon’s decision to call the Canadian Industrial Relations Board in to assist the parties in finding an agreement, Matt Poirier, vice-president of federal government relations with the Retail Council of Canada, said there "doesn't seem to be any urgency" in resolving the disputes in BC and Quebec and it may result in empty shelves as the holiday season approaches.

As it is, some retailers in the region may already be experiencing delays in goods as a result of the dispute.