By Jenny Wagler
Sixteen months of bargaining punctuated by federal mediation have culminated in what employers believe is the longest collective bargaining agreement achieved on a North American waterfront.
“This is an historic agreement for us,” said BC Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) vice-president of marketing and information services Greg Vurdela.
The eight-year agreement with five longshore locals of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Canada was ratified by both sides earlier this month.
“It’s not a permanent fix to a broken bargaining structure, but certainly our view is if the parties can achieve this under this structure, there’s hope for the future in terms of a permanent fix to the situation once and for all.”
The agreement backdates to April 1, 2010, and will expire March 31, 2018. It includes a 22.85% all-in increase for wages, benefits and other costs over the eight-year term, or a 2.62% increase annually. Noting that the lift over the previous eight years was nearly 27%, Vurdela said the current agreement factors in the recession.
BCMEA president and CEO Andy Smith emphasized the significance of the agreement’s length for a waterfront long plagued with protracted bargaining and labour reliability concerns. “If you’re a customer here it seems that we’re always bargaining – that there’s about 20 minutes between collective agreements.”
Smith added that the agreement will go a long way to repairing the reputational damage Vancouver’s waterfront operations have suffered internationally as a result of labour uncertainty.
“We’ve already had numerous phone calls and contacts from shipping lines and regional customers who are thrilled; they see it as a tremendous opportunity,” he said. “Everybody sees it as sending a message to our global trade that we’ve taken a giant step forward in coming to a more sensible arrangement with the ILWU and the best evidence of that is the term of the agreement.”
Vurdela noted that the agreement straddles the expiration of American longshoremen’s collective agreement in approximately three years’ time, plus the widening of the Panama Canal, which is slated to be finished between 2014 and 2015. By doing so, he said, the Pacific Gateway can not only demonstrate stability in a time of uncertainty, but it might also be able to capitalize on instability down the West Coast and draw new customers north.
Vurdela added that the new agreement also provides customers with cost predictability for the next seven years.
“It will enable the operators here in the gateway to essentially work longer-term deals with the people they supply the services to.”
ILWU Canada president Tom Dufresne said that from the union’s perspective, some of the best news in the collective agreement includes provisions for topping up maternity and paternity leave, “good” wage increases, and a cost-of-living provision in the agreement’s final three years.
Dufresne said an eight-year agreement wasn’t his first choice, but he noted that its stability and predictability gives Port Metro Vancouver “something that the port can go out and market.”
“I would have preferred a four- or six-year collective agreement; eight years is an awful long collective agreement.”
However, he called the cost-of-living provision “built-in insurance.”
Dufresne added that another plus of the current collective agreement was that it was “freely negotiated under the current regime of the Canada labour code.”
That opinion is not shared by the BCMEA.
“There was pain and commercial damage reaching the deal,” Vurdela said. “There were reputational issues in reaching the deal.”
He pointed out that when labour uncertainty peaked earlier this year with a strike vote passing February 1, up to 15% of the port’s cargo was diverted to American ports (see “Simmering port labour unrest sending goods shipments south” – issue 1109, January 25-31).
Vurdela said the BCMEA is continuing to seek a new bargaining structure that would be conducted by a “neutral third party” to eliminate the risk of waterfront work stoppages.
Both Vurdela and Smith commended the federal government’s close involvement with this round of bargaining, which has included two mediation efforts and a Canada Industrial Relations Board review (see “Port unions didn’t bargain in bad faith, according to CIRB ruling” – issue 1110; February 1-7).
“We had numerous government efforts to facilitate getting that agreement, which were not particularly fruitful but were very creative and certainly reflected a refreshing level of concern from Ottawa about what’s going on here,” Smith said.
Dufresne countered that federal and other external involvement has slowed the bargaining process. “An agreement could have been reached much earlier if people had come to the table seeking agreement,” he said. “There was a lot of time spent with people other than those who were at the table – people like [Port Metro Vancouver] – sticking their nose in the bargaining and trying to disrupt it. That was not very helpful.”
Negotiations are still ongoing with the ILWU foremen’s union, which negotiates separately. Vurdela noted that the BCMEA is looking for a similar length of agreement with the foremen.