Dockworkers across the eastern United States are joining their counterparts in striking at the ports of Montreal, as a new wave of labor strikes sweeps North American supply chains.
Workers at 36 US ports from Maine to Texas took to picket lines early Tuesday in a strike to protest wages and automation.
The contract between the ports and about 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association expired at midnight.
Workers at the Port of Philadelphia marched in a circle outside the port and chanted, “No work without a fair contract.” The union, which was on strike for the first time since 1977, was placing message boards on the side of one truck that read: “Automation hurts families: ILO advocates job protection.”
The US Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, said Monday evening that both sides had backed away from previous pay offers. But no agreement was reached.
Meanwhile, port workers in Montreal began a 72-hour strike on Monday. The action closed two terminals handling about 40 per cent of container traffic at Canada’s second-largest port.
The local union, affiliated with the Canadian Federation of Public Employees, says the pressure tactic is aimed at giving weight to demands for regular scheduling and higher wages.
The Maritime Employers Association (MEA) said Sunday it had tried “every means possible” to avoid a strike, including mediation and at an emergency hearing before the Canadian Industrial Relations Board that afternoon.
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These two strikes come at a pivotal time, with the US presidential election weeks away and the broader North American economy slowing under the weight of rising interest rates.
Recent confidence that inflation is back under control — a trend that has prompted central banks on both sides of the border to begin interest rate cuts — may be at risk amid the strikes.
A U.S. port strike “lasting more than a week or two will lead to higher prices and noticeable shortages of manufacturing inputs and retail goods,” said a Moody’s analysis that the company shared with Global News on Wednesday.
She said the automobile sector will face difficulties with dwindling stocks of imported components and a slowdown in agricultural imports and exports.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce says $3.6 billion worth of goods and services cross the border between the United States and Canada every day. A large amount of imports into Canada come through U.S. East Coast ports, which are able to handle much greater capacity than the Port of Halifax and the Port of Montreal, the two main Canadian shipping points on the Atlantic Ocean.
Business groups say that closing these American ports would threaten the delivery and continuity of many of these goods.
“There’s a lot of concern,” Pascal Chan, senior director of transportation, infrastructure and construction at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, told Global News.
“Any major disruption could jeopardize the livelihoods of workers in many industries on both sides of the border.”
Business groups are also eyeing potential closures at British Columbia ports, where dockworkers notified their employers early this month that they had approved their strike mandate.
The 7400 BC dock workers’ strike lasted 13 days in July 2023, shutting down the country’s largest port and costing the economy billions of dollars.
Last October, an eight-day employee strike at the St. Lawrence Seaway locks halted shipments of grain, iron ore and gasoline along the trade lane.
In Montreal, shipping workers went on strike for five days in April 2021 and in August 2020 in a 12-day job strike, leaving 11,500 containers left on the waterfront.
– With files from Sean Boynton of Global News, The Canadian Press and The Associated Press
&Copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
