West Coast port dispute working hard to kill future waterfront business and jobs for all British Columbians
Automation opposition and labour relations confrontations guaranteed to stall supply chain efficiencies, eliminate dockworkers’ career options and corrode confidence in West Coast port reliability
This month’s instalment of B.C.’s waterfront labour-relations soap opera will be entertaining for businesses, entrepreneurs and consumers that don’t rely on the free flow of goods through Canada’s Asia-Pacific Gateway.
For everyone else, the show is anything but amusing.
Watching hard-won business slip away while port employers and a dockworker union representing several hundred highly-paid members dance around contract issues for close to two years is frustrating.
No, more than that: it is infuriating.
Remember, too, that if and when that dancing is done and a new four-year contract agreement between International Longshore and Warehouse Union Ship & Dock Foremen ILWU Local 514 and the BC Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) is reached, the port and the rest of the Asia-Pacific Gateway wlll have only a brief two-year break before there is another potential West Coast supply chain disruption because the current contract between Local 514 and the BCMEA expired in March 2023.
So, the country’s largest port and the rest of its vital transpacific trade corridor is now subject to disruption from a 730-member union every two years.
That is not going to cut it for global container shipping lines.
They won’t wager any business expansion bets on a port system at the mercy of so much uncertainty.
That business lost to transpacific cargo competitors will hurt B.C. port employers and employees alike.
Local 514, like its International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) counterpart in the United States, is opposed to any automation the unions believe will eliminate waterfront jobs today.
But the ILWU-ILA inner circle jobs-for-life members do not care about waterfront jobs tomorrow.
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s $3 billion Terminal 2 project could be a victim of the current waterfront labour dispute / VFPA
So, good luck to the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s ambitions to build its $3 billion Terminal 2 project and the expanded transpacific trade it would promote for B.C. and the rest of the country.
Union bosses will ensure Terminal 2’s progress is blocked at every turn if its design includes any of the automation that would make it financially and operationally viable in the highly competitive container shipping business.
What container terminal company in its right mind would agree to manage a new container shipping operation that is obsolete from Day 1?
So, the 1,000 new jobs that Terminal 2 would generate are also indirectly on the table in the stalled 2024 ILWU-BCMEA contract negotiations.
At this writing, a conclusion to this year’s Local 514-BCMEA contract confrontation appears as far away as it ever has been.
The province’s business community can only hope for a surprise Hollywood ending.
Soon.
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