Canada Port Disruption Sparks Fear of Wider Trade Snarls

Two of Canada’s three biggest ports are expected to be closed November 4 after maritime employers responded to a longshore union’s strike notice by locking them out. A leading business group called for government intervention to prevent costly economic damage.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union Ship & Dock Foremen Local 514, which represents 730 workers at ports including Vancouver and Port Rupert, gave 72-hour advanced notice on October 31 of a walkout starting November 4 at 8 a.m. Pacific time.

The BC Maritime Employers Association said in response it intends to lock out ILWU Local 514 members on the same day. Barring a last-minute truce, a full shutdown would halt all cargo operations for its many member companies in British Columbia. Cruises and grain longshoring would continue, however.

In a statement over the weekend, ILWU Local 514 President Frank Morena said the BCMEA “has grossly overreacted to the union’s efforts to restart stalled talks by taking limited job action with the lockout threat and a new threat to demand significant concessions from the existing union contract in a new collective agreement.”

The Local 514-BCMEA labor contract expired in March 2023 and talks have failed several times, including the most recent round with federal mediation. The employer group said a final offer in late October would raise the median foreperson compensation to C$293,617 ($211,000) from C$246,323 per year, not including benefits and pensions.

‘Immediate Action’

David van Hemmen, vice president of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, said the disruption endangers C$800 million per day in trade.“We are extremely concerned that this strike could cascade quickly to shutting down the entire West Coast port system,” van Hemmen said. “We are calling for immediate action by the federal government to intervene.”

Steven MacKinnon, Canada’s labor minister, said in a post on X November 2 that “federal mediators are on site, ready to assist the parties.”

Meanwhile, the country’s No. 2 port in Montreal has seen about half of its container terminals shut intermittently in recent weeks because of an issue with a separate dockworker union.

Read More: Montréal Employers Threaten to Suspend Striking Port Workers’ Salary Guarantee

‘Poor Halifax’

“Canada’s top three ports are now, for all intents and purposes, closed — leaving poor Halifax to pick up the slack,” Stephanie Loomis, head of ocean freight for the Americas at Rhenus Logistics Americas, wrote November 3 in a LinkedIn post. “It won’t take long for this port to get buried.”

In 2023, a 13-day strike by more than 7,000 longshore workers caused large-scale disruption at Canada’s West Coast ports, and the North American transportation and logistics sectors have continued to be hit by labor disputes. Canada’s two biggest railways were also shut temporarily over the summer after bargaining between union leaders and their employers broke down.

A three-day strike idled work at every major port on the U.S. East and Gulf coast in early October, and while dockworkers and their employers were able to close a deal on wages that got them back to work, the trickier issue of automation remains unresolved ahead of the new January 15 deadline.