Dockworkers at the Port of Montreal have started a three-day strike at two terminals, after the local union and the Maritime Employer’s Association (MEA) failed to agree to a new collective bargaining deal.
The 72-hour strike kicked off at 7 a.m. EST on September 30 at the port’s Viau and Maisonneuve Termont terminals, with an estimated 350 workers walking off the job, CBC reports. The union initially took a strike vote on September 24, after rejecting the latest proposed terms from the MEA. Three days later, the union issued a strike notice for the two terminals, while indicating that it would be willing to call off the stoppage if employers met certain conditions. In a statement issued on September 29, the MEA said that it had exhausted “all possible means” to avoid a strike, including federal mediation and an emergency meeting with Canada’s Industrial Relations Board.
Shortly after the strike began, Canada’s transport minister Anita Anand urged the parties to return to the table to continue negotiations, adding that “the Port of Montreal is critical to our supply chains.” She also noted that she and labor secretary Steven MacKinnon are “monitoring the situation closely.”
The Viau and Masonneuve terminals account for 41% of container traffic at the Port of Montreal, combining to handle more than a million twenty-foot equivalent units of cargo annually. The longshoremen’s union at the port has been without a collective bargaining deal since its previous agreement expired at the end of December 2023.
