A threatened lockout of waterfront workers that would shut down almost all port activity in B.C. would have a devastating domino effect on Western and national economies, the Vancouver Port Authority predicted Thursday.
“We’re talking about petrochemicals, sulfur, potash, coal and the entire forest industry of B.C.,” said Jamie Lamb, manager of government relations for the port authority.
The shutdown threat also sent a chill through the B.C. forest industry, which is urging the federal government to get involved before there is “irreparable damage” to some of its members.
Council of Forest Industries president Ron MacDonald said if the shutdown proceeds, the federal government should cancel a parliamentary recess planned for next week to end the dispute.
“About $90 million worth of goods pass through the port on a daily basis so if this drags on for more than two weeks, that’s more than $1.2 billion worth of business lost,” he said.
Seventy two hour lockout notice was issued Thursday by the B.C. Maritime Employers Association to the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, Local 500, which represents 2,000 employees.
The lockout, which would take effect Sunday at 4:30 p.m., means all port activity, except for grain shipments, would come to a halt.
Federal Labour Minister Claudette Bradshaw, Liberal MP for Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe on the East Coast, says she will not impose a settlement.
Lamb said a dispute would cause severe damage to the port’s reputation. He noted six container ships have already been diverted to other ports due to the uncertainty surrounding the situation.
“Just the threat of this kind of thing hurts business,” Lamb said. “People can’t take the risk and they’d rather pay substantially more money to try and divert through a U.S. port because they have customers to supply.”
He said 10 years’ of hard work by port officials paid off this year in attracting three shipping lines to use Vancouver as a first port of call.
“Will we still have those lines after [another labour dispute]? It will be difficult.”
Columbia Containers representative Don Moore, who had to lay off his 15-person crew during a labour dispute at the port this summer, said everyone is quickly tiring of the work stoppages.
“This is sick,” Moore said. “We just went through this. I have been at the port for 50 years and I can’t remember seeing this kind of stupidity. We’re going to shut the whole port down on a jurisdictional thing. It’s crazy.”
COFI’s MacDonald noted the B.C. forest industry lost $1.5 billion last year, so many companies can’t afford to stockpile inventories. He also said Japanese customers now carry just a three-week supply of lumber from B.C. so they will quickly look for other suppliers.
“A shutdown that lasts any length of time could do irreparable damage to some of our companies.”
The employers had set a 4 p.m. Thursday deadline for Local 500 to respond to what the association calls its final offer, but were told it would not be presented to union members for a ratification vote.
BCMEA president Bob Wilds said Thursday: “We believe the employers’ offer is a good one, and deserves to be voted on.”
Union president Tom Dufresne said he was taken aback by the lockout notice.
He said there were only four issues left to be resolved in the contract dispute and that his union was willing to return to the bargaining table at any time.
“The membership is willing to continue working to keep the ports open while we resolve our differences,” said Dufresne.
Dufresne also said the final offer – which includes a 9.5-per-cent wage increase over four years, bringing the base pay to $27.76 an hour – was too similar to one union members rejected in June. The last contract expired in late 1998.
Talks were suspended last week when the union said it would not conclude a collective agreement until its concerns regarding a contract awarded to a non-union testing and sampling firm at Pacific Coast Terminals in Port Moody was resolved.
The dispute centres around a 1998 decision by Sultran, a Calgary-based sulphur conglomerate that owns the Pacific Coast Terminal dock, to award a three-year contract to test the quality of sulphur shipments in the port to Certispec Services, a non-union firm.
The contract, employing 10 full-time and 20 part-time workers, had for the previous two decades been shared by two firms, both employing members of the longshoremen’s union.
Sultran has said that its decision to hire Certispec was based exclusively on Certispec’s bid, which offered “better procedures, better supervision, and greater flexibility at a lower cost.”
Wilds said it can’t get involved in the dispute because Sultran is not a BCMEA member.
“We cannot and will not interfere between shippers and their contractors.”
Dufresne reiterated the union’s stance that it could not sign an agreement that did not include provisions governing the use of union labour in the testing and sampling of cargo.
“The membership spoke clearly that this jurisdictional issue had to be resolved prior to a collective agreement,” said Dufresne. “We see it as an over-all strategy to de-unionize the waterfront.”
The two sides in the dispute have been in a legal strike/lock-out position since Oct. 20.
Union members at Vancouver’s Centerm dock – “just refer to us as Local 500,” they said, refusing to give names – say they’re willing to be locked out over the issue of jurisdiction.
“Money’s not the issue,” said one member. “We just want job security.”
If a strike or lockout occurs, it would be the second time this year the port had been hit by a major dispute. Truckers withdrew their services for four weeks in July and August.
