How 165 workers parked tugboats and froze a B.C. shipyard
Nearly 1,000 employees in North Vancouver’s docks are off the job as a battle between tugboat operators and their employer paralyzes one of the country’s largest ship-building operations.
So while other tugboat firms have largely taken up the slack by the striking operators for Seaspan, it’s the company’s ship-building arm that’s taking the big hit from the job action. Those workers’ last collective agreement with Seaspan expired three years ago. Negotiations began in early 2020 and were delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Canadian Merchant Service Guild has not responded to multiple phone calls and emails sent since last Tuesday. Guild members told The Tyee the two parties originally agreed to not speak to media about the terms of the dispute. Enter the feds. Seaspan’s tugboat operations are federally regulated. In September, government mediators joined the parties to try and find a path back to the bargaining table.
Most of these shipyard workers are not actually on strike but have refused to cross the picket line in solidarity with the guild. The news was well-received on the picket line, where members of different union locals tossed around a frisbee and sipped from Tim Hortons coffee cups. Some wore T-shirts bearing the slogan: “2% is for milk, not wage increases.”Hounsell said that has caused work at the shipyard to grind to a halt. She said it had also affected business at the drydock, which among other things does emergency repairs for some ships.
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