The Federal Government Has Crushed Another Pair Of Strikes

In yet another infringement on workers’ right to strike, the Trudeau government ended work stoppages at ports in British Columbia and Quebec last week by imposing binding arbitration on the unions involved.

Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon forced workers back to their jobs by again using his powers under section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to instruct the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to impose arbitration, just as he did against Teamsters rail workers in late August. The order ended work stoppages at four B.C. ports as well as at port terminals in Montreal and Quebec City.

B.C. port foremen, represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), Local 514, had been without a contract since March 2023. Port workers in Quebec, represented by locals of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), have been attempting to secure new contracts for even longer.

As far back as January of this year, talks stalled between CUPE and the Maritime Employers Association (MEA) at the Port of Montreal, as the employer unsuccessfully attempted to have the CIRB deem the port an “essential service.” The union had already requested a mediator in September of 2023. Employer associations were eagerly pressuring the government to intervene, as cargo companies began to reroute their shipments away from the port in anticipation of a strike.

At the Quebec City port, workers have been locked out and trying to get a contract for more than two years as excessive overtime and other hours of work issues went unaddressed. With the federal ban on scabs not yet in force, the employer deployed replacement workers against locked out union members.

Talks at the Quebec ports continued to drag on with limited progress made. The union launched a three-day work stoppage in the fall to apply additional pressure to the employer, but resumed talks did not produce a settlement.

Union members in Montreal upped the ante by beginning a ban on overtime in early October, a form of limited strike activity that aimed to highlight the outstanding hours of work issues that members wanted the employer to address in bargaining.

On October 27, Montreal port workers again held a full one-day strike. At this stage, the MEA publicly said it “hopes” for further assistance from federal mediators, but with an indefinite strike or lockout in the offing, a resolution seemed unlikely.

By the following Thursday, October 31, union members in Montreal were again on the picket lines, forcing an indefinite shutdown of two container terminals and paralyzing 40 per cent of container capacity. The minister of labour had proposed a deal whereby a special mediator would help the parties settle a deal, but this would have required no strikes or lockouts for 90 days. The union rejected the proposal.

Rather than return to the bargaining table with an offer acceptable to union members, the employer association again sought to have a court declare the strike illegal. Thankfully, this was also rejected, following the same logic used by the CIRB to earlier dismiss the employers’ call to deem the ports an essential service.

With the union rejecting a “final” offer from the MEA, the latter imposed a lockout on November 10. As the union summarized, this marked another “dark day for workers’ rights” in Canada.

On the west coast, the BC Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) locked out more than 700 members of ILWU 514 on November 4 after the foreman’s union announced a limited strike in the form of a ban on overtime.

While wages remained a sticking point, for the union the issue of automation and job security figured prominently. In particular, the union had concerns about the automation being introduced by DP World, a multinational logistics corporation based in Dubai which now owns facilities at major ports around the world, including in B.C. The effects of automation on jobs was also central in the previous ILWU strike at the B.C. ports last summer.

Further mediated talks commenced alongside the lockout but resulted in little movement from the employer. The union also filed further complaints with the CIRB alleging the employer pulled previously negotiated provisions from the collective agreement.

As employers in both locations dug in, it became clearer that the government would likely intervene to impose arbitration. With pressure mounting across the country, and business associations fuming, the Liberals once again buckled under the pressure, sacrificing their supposed belief in the collective bargaining process at the altar of economic efficiency.

The ILWU believes the employer deliberately imposed the lockout to encourage government intervention. This is a reasonable reading of the situation, and it’s precisely the contagion effect that union leaders and labour relations experts have warned about. When employers think the government will end work stoppages in supposedly “essential” industries and impose arbitration, they have no incentive to bargain. They will instead wait until the repressive hand of the state comes down on workers.

Employer organizations continue to warn that Canada’s “reputation as a reliable trading partner” is being “tarnished” by strikes at workplaces central to the international supply chain, such as ports and railways. Yet the threat of such reputational damage doesn’t seem to be enough to incentivize employers to bargain and meet their workers’ legitimate demands. Rather, employers have learned the lesson that when the going gets tough, they simply have to wait for the government to bail them out and force a resolution on striking workers.

Both unions have vowed to challenge the government’s actions in court, as the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference has already done with respect to the government’s move to end work stoppages at CN Rail and Canadian Pacific Kansas City.

The unions have a good chance of winning these cases, given the constitutionalization of the right to strike in Canada since 2015. If they do ultimately win in court, however, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. Much time will elapse and resources will be squandered, while the damage of imposed contracts will compound.

The federal government may believe it has solved the problems of halted cargo and business backlash, but imposing arbitration simply kicks the can down the road. When workers’ issues are left unresolved, so-called ‘labour peace’ remains elusive. Indeed, strikes previously shut down the Port of Montreal in 2020 and 2021, before being ended through back-to-work legislation. Here we are years later and these workers are again having their grievances ignored while the government does the bidding of the boss.

Grievances will continue to fester until the next time workers have the opportunity to exercise their power. Unless governments plan to continually repress workers, they should be prepared to deal with the next, inevitable round of strike action.

There was, of course, another way out. The government could have made clear to the port employers that it wouldn’t be there to catch them with the safety net of binding arbitration. This was essentially the message sent to port employers by the Biden Administration in the United States when strikes rocked the east coast in early October. After a relatively successful strike, workers ratified contracts with wage increases of more than 60 per cent spread over six years.

The Liberal government has taken a different tact. By demonstrating throughout this year that it has ‘section 107’ in its back pocket and isn’t afraid to use it, the federal government has signalled to bosses that they don’t have to worry about the consequences of strike action. In fact, they can deploy a lockout and hasten the imposition of a back-to-work order. It is indeed another “dark day” in Canadian labour history.

All of this begs the question: What is a Charter-protected right to strike worth if it still allows governments to act this way?

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