Canada’s labor minister on Tuesday ordered operations to resume at Pacific and Atlantic coast ports shut down by labor disputes that halted Can$1.3 billion in daily shipments.
Steve MacKinnon, the minister, said deadlocked negotiations at the ports of Montreal and Vancouver that go as far back as two years would be settled through binding arbitration.
At the same time, he said the government would consider wholesale changes to collective bargaining rules to avoid future crippling strikes or lockouts, notably in the transportation sector.
“Canada is a nation whose economy relies on trade… and this morning, Canada’s largest east and west coast ports sit silent,” MacKinnon told a news conference.
“Canada’s economy is taking a hit,” he said, pointing to “total impasses” in negotiations between dockworkers and their respective employers. “There is a limit to the economic self-destruction that Canadians are prepared to accept.”
All parties involved, he said, have demonstrated “an alarming lack of urgency” and mediators have determined “no path forward is possible, based on the inflexibility on both sides.”
Some 1,200 dockworkers at the Port of Montreal were locked out late Sunday while about 700 ship and dock supervisors at the Port of Vancouver were locked out in a separate dispute one week earlier.
Both moves followed partial and brief strikes on both coasts in recent months, and threats of more to come. The negotiations had stalled over pay, automation and other issues.
The unions said the government’s order for binding arbitration undermined workers’ rights.
MacKinnon said allowing the strikes to continue risked worsening impacts on Canada’s economy and harm to its reputation in global trade.
Tuesday’s announcement marked the second time Ottawa has stepped in to end a labor dispute in recent months, having taken similar action when the nation’s two largest railways locked out workers in August.
Canada Post workers have also given notice of a possible strike starting on Friday, ahead of the busy holiday season.
MacKinnon said structural problems with collective bargaining needed to be addressed.
“I don’t have a prescription,” he commented, “but I do have a very good diagnosis” with some negotiations stretching into months and years that “need not.”
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