MONTREAL — Port and railroad union members in Quebec and across Canada are fighting for better pay to cope with high prices and more livable schedules.
On Oct. 7, Longshoremen’s Union Local 375, an affiliate of Canadian Union of Public Employees, announced that its 1,197 members at the port of Montreal who work for the Maritime Employers Association would refuse overtime beginning Oct. 10.
A week earlier, 300 unionists at two terminals run by Termont, which handles 41% of container traffic at the port, went on a three-day strike.
The longshore workers at Canada’s second-largest port rejected the employers’ last offer by over 99% and voted 98% to authorize a strike. As soon as picket signs went up, union members were greeted with solidarity from passing truckers and others.
Port workers are required to call in every afternoon to find out if, when and where they are working the next day. They can be forced to work 19 days out of 21 all year-round. This makes family, social and personal life unmanageable.
Among those at the picket in solidarity with the port workers has been Teamsters union members who work on the Canadian National Railway. In late August, after some 10,000 freight rail workers went on strike at CN or were locked out by Canadian Pacific Kansas City bosses for three days, Ottawa ordered them back to work, claiming their actions were harming the “economy.”
The presidents of port workers unions from Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax held a press conference here to back the rail workers’ right to strike. “Port workers across Canada will not allow the right to strike to be put in the shredder,” Montreal CUPE spokesman Michel Murray said.
The day after the longshore workers announced plans to indefinitely refuse overtime, 10 boss associations, from the Chamber of Marine Commerce to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, sent an open letter to the federal government demanding action to stop the threat of strikes in the transportation industries.
Federal Labor Minister Steven MacKinnon proposed Oct. 14 that the dockworkers’ union and Maritime Employers Association take their dispute before a special mediator for 90 days. During that time union members would be barred from refusing overtime. The union rejected the mediator’s plan.
“The labor movement and all working people need to mobilize solidarity with the Montreal port workers and defend our right to use our unions to bargain and to strike,” said Philippe Tessier, a rail worker and Teamster member. He is also the Communist League candidate for the Quebec National Assembly.