B.C. port shutdown enters third day, no end in sight

The labour dispute that has shut down British Columbia’s ports for a third day is showing no signs of a quick resolution.

Over 700 port workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 514 were locked out by their employer on Monday after initiating limited job action.

The B.C. Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) says there has been no engagement with ILWU or federal mediators since.

The Greater Vancouver Board of Trade has estimated that the work stoppage is disrupting roughly $800M worth of trade per day.

The BCMEA says it may be “required to reassess” its position on a current offer, which was presented to the union as a “final offer” last week. While the offer included a 19.2% wage increase over four years, the union says it failed to address workers’ biggest issue: the impact of automation on jobs.

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Concerns over the increased use of automated machinery in the port industry have been a key sticking point for ILWU since its contract expired in March 2023.

“It doesn’t matter how well paid their jobs are if they’re eliminated by automation,” said John-Henry Harter, a labour studies lecturer at Simon Fraser University. “The only power the union has is to collectively bargain around automation.”

Harter believes it’s in Canada’s best interest for a deal to be reached without federal intervention.

“It is the only way to resolve this, and not have it crop up again six months from now, a year from now.”

This latest lockout comes after more than a year of negotiations between the BCMEA and ILWU, with no union contract in place since March 2023.

Last year, a 13-day strike at B.C. ports caused an estimated $10 billion in trade disruption.

Local business starts to feel impacts of work stoppage at B.C. ports

A local business owner says his store has started feeling the impact of the port lockout just a couple of days after it started.

Owner of Welk’s General Store on Main Street, John Welk, says he is already seeing the store’s shipments getting stuck with nothing getting in or out of the ports.

“For instance, toothpaste, which we’ve been expecting for a while is now locked up in there. And who knows how long it’ll take for them to get it out?” he said.

He says last year’s 13-day port strike hadn’t impacted his the way it did other businesses. But this time, he says the lockout taking place right before the holiday shopping season is far from ideal.

“(It’s) definitely the time of the year that we make the money to fuel us for the rest of the year, so it’s the most important time for sure, without a doubt in retail,” Welk said.

“If you have days of ports not working you’re going to see backlogs of those containers being offloaded. So I mean, every day kind of counts during Christmas [time].”

Business groups have asked the federal government to intervene and designate ports as an essential service so that full work stoppage can’t go ahead, but Welk says he hopes workers’ rights are also protected. 

-With files from The Canadian Press