Picket lines went up at six grain terminal locations in Metro Vancouver on Tuesday morning.
About 600 workers have gone on strike and Grain Workers Union Local 333 president Douglas Lea-Smith said the Vancouver Terminal Elevators Association needs to come back to the bargaining table to negotiate a deal.
The union said it provided the employer with a “comprehensive package” last week and it had no counter-offer.
Meanwhile, Steven MacKinnon, Canada’s labour minister, said he spoke to both the employer and the union and they have agreed to resume contract negotiations with federal mediators’ help.
“This will have a massive impact on the Canadian economy,” Lea-Smith said.
“It will slow everything. They’re claiming $35 million a day. We are not looking for $35 million a day and we are very cognizant of how this impacts the farmers and we want to get a contract and it’s the employers who are holding up the contract.”
Lea-Smith added that the workers “carried” the companies through COVID-19, a drought and record-high inflation rates so they need to meet the workers’ demands.
Canadian grain farmers have said a strike would cripple crop exports since about 52 per cent of all Canadian-grown grain went to those terminals last year.
“The value of those ports to the Canadian economy is huge and that needs to be recognized as we continue to see threats to our supply chain, be it rail strike, port workers, now it’s the terminal workers,” Ian Boxell, a grain farmer and president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, told Global News.
“It just seems continually we’re getting hit in the gut with something that at the end of the day hurts farmers’ cash flow bottom line.”
— with files from The Canadian Press