Montreal dockers locked out over ending pay guarantees

MONTREAL's 850 dockers have been locked out of the port after refusing to work overtime in a dispute over management's withdrawal of pay guarantees which have been part of contracts since the 1970s.

"Faced with the union's refusal to acknowledge the urgency of the matter as well as the need to radically amend the collective agreement between the Maritime Employers Association [MEA] and the Port of Montreal's longshoremen, the MEA has chosen to exercise its right according to the labour code and is ordering a lockout," the employer group said in a statement.

At issue is the extension of the 40-hour a week guaranteed pay whether dockers worked or not. While Montreal's Maritime Employers Association (MEA) are willing to grandfather in the guarantee for veteran dockers, they are not willing to extend it to late comers or part-timers, reported the Montreal Gazette.

With no containers moving through Canada's second largest port after Vancouver, management is demanding an end to "pressure tactics", which include refusing overtime, said MEA spokesman Gilles Corriveau.

Mr Corriveau said the cost of the pay guarantee has doubled for shippers in the last five years, reaching about C$14 million (US$13.3 million) last year. "Market conditions are different now. We can no longer afford to pay people to stay at home," he said.

But Michel Murray, spokesman for Local 375 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), disputed the MEA claim that Montreal is the only North American port with such a pay guarantee. The Port of New York, he said, has a different method of calculating it, but the end result is the same.

The MEA negotiates and administers collective agreements covering over 1,450 dockers from Hamilton, Ontario down the St Lawrence River to Trois Rivieres in Quebec.
(Source:www.schednet.com)