The Canadian government has said it will intervene in labor disputes that have shuttered three of the nation’s largest ports and stalled an estimated CAD 1.2 billion (USD 860 million, EUR 811 million) in goods from entering the country each day.
In response, Canadian Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon said today he is directing the Canada Industrial Relations Board to reopen all port operations and move the talks to binding arbitration.
In a statement released on X on 12 November, MacKinnon wrote that “collective bargaining negotiations between the parties in the ports of British Columbia, Montreal, and Quebec are all at an impasse. The responsibility for these negotiations belongs to the parties alone, but the impacts are being borne by all Canadians. We simply cannot afford this uncertainty and instability at this moment.”
In a prior X post made just before federal mediators attempted to bring the parties together this weekend, MacKinnon had spoken of “a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” in the labor negotiations.
“Public services, such as ports, exist to serve the needs of Canadians,” he said.
The move comes amid two escalating labor disputes and one long-term negotiation failure at three of the nation’s busiest ports. A lockout began at the Port of Montreal on 11 November, when the Maritime Employers Association (MEA) locked out Montreal Longshoreman’s Union members who had rejected a contract offer.
Port of Montreal CEO Julie Gascon said in a press conference that she expected the closure to stall CAD 400 million (USD 288 million, EUR 272 million) worth of goods daily and directly affect 1,200 dockworkers and 10,000 other workers whose livelihoods depend on supplies that flow through the port.
One week earlier, on 4 November, the BC Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) had locked members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 514 out of the ports of British Columbia, responding to the union’s statement that it would declare a strike action the day after rejecting the BCMEA’s final contract offer.
The B.C. port closures are stalling an estimated CAD 800 million (USD 574 million, EUR 541 million) in goods a day from entering the Canadian economy.
Over the weekend, BCMEA and ILWU representatives met with federal negotiators in an attempt to resolve the dispute, but talks broke down quickly. BCMEA Vice President of Government and Public Affairs Rob MacKay-Dunn said, via a 9 November statement, that the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) had ended the negotiations after no progress was made, saying that “the BCMEA has been working in good faith for nearly two years to seek an agreement that is beneficial for B.C.’s waterfront workforce and Canada’s supply chain.”
In a prior bargaining update, BCMEA said that it had worked to achieve a “reasonable, balanced deal that recognizes the hard work of the 730 forepersons working at Canada’s West Coast ports.”
The manager’s organization placed blame on ILWU leadership for the lockout, mentioning President Frank Morena by name and claiming that “over the past six months, ILWU Local 514 leadership has been found to have bargained in bad faith by the Canada Industrial Relations Board three times, including an attempt at an illegal strike in July 2024.”
In a statement released late in the evening on Thursday 7 November, the BCMEA said that its final offer, which was rejected by the union, included an increase in median foreperson compensation from CAD 246,323 (USD 177,072, EUR 165,067) to CAD 293,617 (USD 211,070, EUR 273,711), an average CAD 21,000 (USD 15,100, EUR 14,076) lump sum payment, and an increase to retirement benefits from CAD 93,750 (USD 67,412, EUR 62,841) to CAD 108,750 (USD 78,198, EUR 72896).
For its part, ILWU Local 514 told the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) that it was ready to return to negotiations when the BCMEA was and that its main concern was not salaries but automation-related job loss. According to Simon Fraser University labor expert John-Henry Harter, from the union’s perspective, “how well [its] members are paid doesn’t really matter when they are automated out of a job.”
In a statement released on 9 November, the union said that it was the BCMEA, not the union, who cut off the federally mediated talks quickly.
The union’s statement said that “the ILWU Local 514 bargaining committee attended the federally mediated talks and were prepared to go late into the evening and through the weekend, but after the mediator spent 40 minutes with the ILWU and just 12 minutes with the BCMEA, the mediator came back and said that the employers’ bargaining agent said they would not change their so-called 'final offer' and that the talks were over.”
The issues under dispute mirror those that are currently being hashed out in the U.S.’s East Coast port negotiations.
