A few hundred port workers shut down a portion of East Hastings Street Thursday for a march.
They also held a short rally near the intersection of East Hastings and Main streets.
The union that represents B.C. port workers issued strong words against their employer, the BC Maritime Employers Association, Thursday morning.
More than 7,000 International Longshore and Warehouse Union members walked off the job on Canada Day after voting overwhelmingly to strike against the BC Maritime Employers Association.
“Instead of negotiating to end the strike at the west coast ports, the BC Maritime Employers Association has launched a smear campaign targeting their own workers,” International Longshore and Warehouse Union president Rob Ashton said.
“This is straight out of the strikebreaking playbook, instead of sitting down and negotiating with workers, they’re funding a dirty-tricks media campaign, using anonymous sources to selectively leak misleading information to reporters.
“They figure if they can ruin their own employees’ reputations, it’ll pave the way for back-to-work legislation, without having to dip into their massive post-pandemic profits to give their workers a little more. I urge reporters, the public, and the federal government not to play their game.”
Ashton said public comments issued by the BCMEA since the strike began have been exaggerated.
“The reality is, our people do hard work under difficult, often dangerous conditions, and they kept Canada’s economy moving through the worst of the pandemic,” Ashton said.
“That’s a long way from the picture the employer wants to paint. It can be a good living, but it takes years of sacrifice to get there, and it’s still hard work.”
Ashton pointed out that union workers experience:
- Many years of waiting on-call to get one-off shifts at very short notice. (At this time) income is sporadic, and the unpredictability of shifts makes it hard to supplement it with other jobs. Turnover is high in this period, and many workers can’t stick it out.
- Even once they have more secure employment, many waterfront workers don’t receive a shift for days or even weeks at a time. Most are dispatched on a day-to-day basis, and can’t count on regular hours or shifts.
- Earning pay rates at the high end of the scale means working night shifts, six or seven days a week.
- Rates of injury are high, with several deaths recorded in recent years.
In an email responding to the union’s Thursday comments, a BCMEA spokesperson called its recent allegations “baseless, without merit and unhelpful in reaching an agreement.”
“We continue to be ready to return to the table at a moment’s notice, assuming ILWU Canada is prepared to put forward a reasonable proposal, particularly on their demand to aggressively expand ILWU jurisdiction over maintenance work on terminal,” the BCMEA spokesperson told Global News.
According to the spokesperson, on June 16, the BCMEA offered to enter a neutral third-party mediation-arbitration process with ILWU Canada. The employer said the process would encourage dialogue and only provide a binding outcome via interest arbitration as a last resort.
It claims ILWU Canada has continually rejected that option.
“The BCMEA continues to seek a fair and balanced deal that recognizes the efforts of the workforce while ensuring ports can re-open, critical goods start flowing and stability is restored to Canada’s supply chain as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.
Early Thursday morning, the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters told Global News it is calling for Ottawa to intervene in B.C.’s port strike and make legal changes that would discourage future that would discourage future labour disruptions.
“We want the federal government to do whatever is in their power to end this quickly,” said Andrew Wynn-Williams, Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters B.C. vice president.
“We think the bigger question is long term. I think the federal government needs to plan further ahead and to have ways to bring these things to resolutions before it hits the stage of a strike.
“This negotiation could have happened months ago. For us, there needs to be a much more proactive position taken by the federal government.”
The BC Maritime Employers Association said in a statement on Wednesday that billions of dollars worth of cargo remain in limbo, disrupting critical supply chains and damaging relationships with international trading partners.
It said on the fifth day of the port strike that if the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada agreed to binding arbitration, “port operations could resume quickly, critical goods could begin to flow again and there would be immediate stability and restoration to Canada’s supply chain operations.”
The association said it first proposed mediated arbitration almost three weeks ago, a process it said would be shaped by both sides and only produce a binding outcome if necessary.
Talks stalled Monday and business groups are increasingly demanding federal legislation to end the disruption, while CP Rail, now known as CPKC Ltd., says it has issued temporary embargoes on rail traffic to the Port of Vancouver.
Both sides in the dispute said Tuesday that maintenance issues were a sticking point in the talks.
The union said its jurisdiction over maintenance is being eroded by the use of contractors, and the key issue is the refusal of employers to agree to “one sentence” of a maintenance document.
The employers association meanwhile said the union was trying to “aggressively expand” its control of maintenance duties far beyond an agreement that the association says has been “legally well established for decades.”
Federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan discussed the strike with his B.C. counterpart, Labour Minister Harry Bains, on Wednesday, but O’Regan has so far resisted calls to legislate the strikers back to work.
A key sticking point for the union is the classification of maintenance work and the use of outside contractors, which longshore workers say encroaches on their jurisdiction.
— with files from Canadian Press