Employers at the Port of Montreal are putting pressure on striking unions

Maritime employers at the Port of Montreal warned they will suspend salary guarantees for striking union members in an escalation of the coastal labor dispute.

The Maritime Employers Association (MEA) says there is “no other choice” and said in a statement on its website that from Tuesday it will suspend salary guarantees “for all dock workers who are not working”, as a means to “mitigate the cumulative impact” to soften. financial impact of repeated strikes and lower volumes at the Port of Montreal.”

The work stoppage comes for employers in Canada’s west coast ports trade union members excluded represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

The strike over planning by Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 375 halted 40% of Montreal’s container throughput at two of the port’s four box terminals last Thursday.

The MEA said it cannot change the hours without formal negotiations and said the “shift and relay” schedules questioned by the union are stipulated in the current contract in force and cannot be used as a bargaining chip to this case to focus on a single operator. Termont Terminals’ Viau and Maisonneuve facilities.

The union rejected an MEA proposal for negotiations with a federal mediator. The employers have asked Labor Minister Steven MacKinnon to intervene to restart negotiations.

Employers said container volumes have fallen in the months since CUPE began a series of overtime strikes, forcing them to “make some cuts within the organisation”, and warned that more could follow.

Find more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

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