Labor dispute shuts down Port of Montreal after 900 longshoremen are locked out

Labor dispute shuts down Port of Montreal

MONTREAL — Commercial operations at the Port of Montreal came to a halt Monday after 900 longshoremen were locked out by their employer over pressure tactics related to contract negotiations.

The Maritime Employers Association spokesman Gilles Corriveau said the association ordered a lockout until further notice because pressure tactics by employees to reach a labor agreement had started to impede port operations.

The association said workers are guaranteed their jobs and full pay even if they do not actually work unloading ships, under the expired agreement. He said their job and revenue security costs more than $9.4 million a year.

“This is a measure we cannot accept anymore because it blows the fees way out of proportion. You need to have people waiting just in case you need them, but the amount of people we have now (waiting) is way too much for the activity there is,” said Corriveau.

The longshoremen have been without a contract since Dec. 31, 2008. They stopped working overtime July 9 in a dispute over wages and overtime payments. The issue for the union is job security, as well as keeping guaranteed payments when longshoremen are on call and waiting for work.

Longshoreman’s Canadian Union of Public Employees spokesman Michel Murray said 169 longshoremen with the least seniority recently had their guaranteed revenue cut and union members responded to the change by working less overtime.

Murray told a news conference the lockout was incomprehensible.

The Maritime Employers Association says about 80 percent of goods that eastern and central Canadians consume go through the Port of Montreal and will be affected by the lockout.

“Will Wal-Mart take other measures to go around that situation, I am sure they will,” Corriveau said, noting the retail giant’s goods are unloaded from containers at the port and then put on a truck or train.

Corriveau said the lockout will cost “millions of dollars a day.”

The Port of Montreal, the second largest after the Port of Vancouver, says it generates spinoffs of some $1.9 billion annually, and creates more than 17,600 direct and indirect jobs.

Corriveau said there are few containers still at the port waiting to be unloaded because a lot of ships have been redirected to other ports to be unloaded.