MONTREAL — Dockworkers at the Port of Montreal started a new strike Thursday morning, forcing the indefinite shutdown of two container terminals at the country’s second biggest port.
The Port of Montreal says the Viau and Maisonneuve terminals are closed until further notice, paralyzing 40 per cent of the port’s total container-handling capacity. The union representing nearly 1,200 longshore workers began its latest strike at 11 a.m., affecting the two terminals operated by the company Termont. The latest strike involves up to 320 workers.
Thursday’s walkout is in addition to an ongoing strike on overtime shifts affecting the entire port, and comes after a three-day strike at the same two container terminals earlier this month. The union also held a 24-hour work stoppage on Sunday.
Officials with the union, which is connected to the Canadian Union of Public Employees, have said they are willing to call off the strike if a deal is reached on a portion of the dispute centred around scheduling.
Union representatives said earlier in the week that Termont is being targeted because it has made widespread use of the scheduling practices the union opposes, on the grounds they impact work-life balance.
The Maritime Employers Association denounced the strike and said it can’t grant the demand to change work schedules without formal negotiations taking place.
“The schedules used on the different docks … called into question by the union in recent days are enshrined in the collective agreement in force and cannot be used as a bargaining chip for a strike targeting a single operator, as is the case today,” the group wrote Thursday in a news release.
Workers have been without a contract since Dec. 31, 2023. Besides issues around scheduling and work-life balance, the union is also asking for a pay raise. It says it will accept the same increases that were granted to the counterparts in Halifax or Vancouver — 20 per cent over four years.
In a statement, Port of Montreal CEO Julie Gascon warned that a prolonged stoppage could have wide-ranging impacts on the economy, and urged the parties to reach a deal. She said ships were already being forced to reroute to other ports.
“This new work stoppage at the Viau and Maisonneuve terminals, at the very hub of our supply chain, can only have a deeply negative impact on thousands of local businesses, as well as on the economy of Quebec and Canada as a whole,” she wrote. “This shutdown affects half of our international container terminals and heightens a climate of uncertainty that undermines the reliability and image of our logistics sector, key elements in the confidence that businesses place in the greater Montreal ecosystem.”
