After an eight-day strike, mediation and the threat of federal legislation, masters, mates and engineers who operate Vancouver-area tugs returned to work April 24 with a tentative three-year agreement. The strike, by 800 members of the Canadian Merchant Service Guild, affected 60 percent of area tugs and cut the number of containership calls to the port by half.
The Guild walked out when the company would not budge on its pay and benefit offers, and no progress had been made on scores of local issues. More than 95 percent of the members voted on the company’s last offer, and 95 percent of them turned it down, according to Guild Secretary-Treasurer Ken Herbert. Canadian law requires a separate strike vote, and 88.7 percent voted for the strike.
Negotiations proceeded with the help of a federal mediator.
“There were a number of other issues that were irritants that we weren’t successful on,” Herbert said. “But once they threw all the money on the table, the mediator threw up his arms and said ‘I’m not going to deal with that part of it.’”
Guild members are officers on the tugs ILWU Canada’s Marine Section Local 400 members serve on as crew members. They generally bargain with the same employers.
Local 400 members respected the Guild’s picket line and ILWU longshore workers brought coffee and doughnuts to the line in support.
Guild members are still voting on the pact as we go to press and the tally won’t be final until June 9.
“Because of the way our members work we have a fairly complicated ratification process,” Herbert said. “We mail ballots and it takes time to get them back because they go to sea for two or three weeks at a time.”
The battle is just beginning for Local 400. Its contract with the Council of Marine Carriers, the employers’ group, expired last October. The local expects to begin hard bargaining after its caucus May 10.
“We have always done ‘me too’ agreements in this industry, and this time the Guild set the pattern,” Local 400 President Terry Engler said. According to Herbert, the guild got 2.5 percent for the first nine months, three percent for the next three months and three percent for each of the last two years. They also won increases in their benefits. Canadian workers have a national healthcare plan, so most U.S.-type healthcare issues never reach the bargaining table. The contract’s package fills in benefits not covered by the national plan, including eye and dental care, drug payments and long-term disability.
Local 400’s main problem is with the tug company Seaspan Inter-national Ltd., its largest employer and Canada’s largest tug company. The union filed for a common-employer status hearing Nov. 16, 2001 with the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to maintain jurisdiction over the work the company gave to the Seafarers International Union after its 1999 buyout of a number of small tug fleets. Many of those boats had SIU crews, but since they were now doing Local 400 work they should belong to Local 400, Engler said. The company, however, sent more work to the SIU-crewed boats and left Local 400 workers on the beach. The board took the employer’s side and ruled March 19 for keeping both unions. Now the unions will have to work it out with the employer and each other.
“Traditional jurisprudence in Canada is that employers want one union representing workers and they almost always get it,” Engler said. “This time they wanted two and they got it. The board can order a representation election or it can choose which union will remain. With Seaspan they didn’t even give us a vote.”
The board was persuaded by the arguments of the employer’s counsel to keep both unions, Engler said.
Prior to the merger Local 400 had four or five boats working continuously in the harbor and two ship docking vessels. Now there’s only one docking vessel.
If the Guild strike is any example, the employers don’t want another job action. A coalition of B.C. business leaders claimed the Guild strike cost the provincial economy $62 million a day, according to the Journal of Commerce. P&O Ports recently announced plans to double container capacity over the next year and they will need good labor relations.
“We’re going to the company and giving them a proposal that they should give us our work back,” Engler said. “If they give us our work back, they won’t have a dispute. If they don’t, we will need to push the company. They’ve given away our work and they are expanding that. If we don’t do anything about it, we could lose the work we have.”
—Tom Price
