VANCOUVER - The International Longshore and Warehouse Union today called on the B.C. Maritime Employers Association to lift its threat to shut west coast ports with a Sunday lockout and return to the bargaining table.
“The maritime employers have irresponsibly precipitated a crisis of confidence in our ports in an effort to rollback contract provisions that go back a generation,” said ILWU Canada president, Tom Dufresne. “We’re calling on them to lift the lockout threat, call back Canadian cargo they are diverting to foreign ports and sit down to resolve this dispute.”
The maritime employers have provoked the current crisis, Dufresne charged, by issuing lockout notice without even waiting for a union counter-proposal on the critical issue of union jurisdiction on the docks.
“We have not threatened strike action nor have we broken off talks,” Dufresne said. “It is the employers who, by seeking to change conditions that have prevailed for nearly 30 years, are threatening massive losses to the Canadian economy. ”
Dufresne said the union had prepared a new offer last week and was ready to table it when the BCMEA declared its position was a “final offer” and issued lockout notice.
“That so-called final offer is not substantially different from one rejected by our members in July by an 83 percent margin,” Dufresne said. “Wages remain an issue and the jurisdiction question must be resolved.”
For nearly 30 years, all testing of products passing through west coast ports has been done by companies using ILWU members. “We don’t care which companies have the contract,” Dufresne said, “but we do insist they use ILWU members. We will not allow a non-union sector to grow up in the area traditionally served by our membership.”
