BC Ports Workers, Employers Ratify Collective Agreement

(Greg Joyce — Globe & Mail)

Negotiations were long and hard but there is now labour peace that will keep goods flowing at British Columbia ports.

The B.C. Maritime Employers Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union ratified a collective agreement that averted a costly strike threat.

“From our perspective clearly we had a majority of employers in favour of ratifying the agreement,” Greg Vurdela, spokesman for the employers association, said Saturday.

He didn't release voting figures and no one from the union was immediately available to comment.

“(Economic) figures released earlier indicate that for every day of a work stoppage in the ports of B.C. it is a cost of $124-million to the Canadian economy,” said Mr. Vurdela.

While the dispute involved only 450 workers, there were fears that as many as 5,000 other workers would walk off the job in support.

That could have crippled ports along Canada's Pacific Coast, and had already prompted as much as a fifth of shipping traffic to be diverted through the U.S. Read more here.