Passengers and cargo are taken off Le Dumont D’Urville, a passenger cruise ship docked in Toronto on Oct. 26.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Le Dumont-D’Urville sailed from Marseille, across the Atlantic and up the St. Lawrence River, to tour the fall splendour and big cities of the Great Lakes. The luxury passenger liner, with cabins for 184, made stops in Cleveland, Milwaukee and Detroit before heading downstream through the Welland Canal.
The French-owned ship was on its way to Boston and down the Eastern Seaboard. Instead, it is stuck in Toronto, docked bow to stern with a freighter, its passengers and crew awaiting the end of a strike that has closed the St. Lawrence Seaway locks and halted more than 100 ships.
About 350 Seaway operators, engineers and supervisors walked off the job early on Oct. 22 after negotiators failed to agree on wage increases. The labour dispute between their union, Unifor, and St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corp. has closed 13 of the 15 locks between Montreal and Lake Erie, preventing ships from moving Prairie wheat, gasoline, steel, road salt and other goods ahead of the winter shutdown in late December.
Terence Bowles, the chief executive officer of St. Lawrence Seaway Management, said he fears the strike will harm the waterway’s reputation as a reliable trade route.
Federal mediator calls for new talks in bid to end St. Lawrence Seaway strike
The key commodities halted by the St. Lawrence Seaway strike
A strike has shut down all shipping on the St. Lawrence Seaway, interrupting exports of grain and other goods from Canada and the United States via the Great Lakes.
The Associated Press
Mr. Bowles made the comments in an interview with The Globe and Mail as both sides prepare to resume talks Friday. The bargaining will take place in Toronto at the office of the Canada Industrial Relations Board and will be assisted by federal mediators.
“If this thing persists, it’s really going to hurt our reputation,” Mr. Bowles said.
Wade Sobkowich, the director of the Western Grain Elevator Association, agrees. Canada’s credibility with exporters and foreign buyers is still recovering from the damage of the summer’s B.C. ports strike and recent railway stoppages.
“We’re already seen as something of a banana republic” when it comes to allowing companies to fulfill contracts without having to overcome artificial disruptions, he said. “This just adds to that.”
Mr. Sobkowich represents the companies that market about 90 per cent of the grain farmed in Western Canada, including Richardson International Ltd. and Cargill Inc. About 20 per cent of the harvest is shipped to the Port of Thunder Bay, where it is loaded onto ships bound for Europe, Africa and elsewhere. Most of this crop is contracted to be delivered in the fall, when demand and prices for Canadian wheat, canola and other grains are at their peak. Total production this year was 62 million tonnes.
He said grain companies are trying to bypass the Seaway with trains to Quebec export terminals, but capacity is very limited. Some have stopped sending crops to Thunder Bay, he said, because they do not want it stranded there for the winter.
Other shippers are making plans to use ports on the U.S. East Coast, according to the American Great Lakes Ports Association, which issued a statement calling the strike a “hot mess.”
“At our ports, stevedores and longshoremen have no ships to unload, marine pilots are out of work, trucking companies have no deliveries to make, and tugboats are idle,” said the statement, warning of “lost jobs in our communities, and millions in economic harm compounding every day.”
The strike comes as organized labour at airlines, automakers and in other sectors are demanding pay raises to keep pace with soaring inflation. Unifor is also in talks with carmaker Stellantis NV STLA-N, with a strike deadline of Sunday night, and is demanding wage increases of about 20 per cent over three years. That would match agreements with Ford Motor Co. F-N and General Motors Co. GM-N.
Mr. Bowles said the not-for-profit Seaway cannot afford similar demands from the union, which he says are more than twice the wage increases received by federal government employees in the spring, when workers represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada received raises of 12 per cent over four years.
Higher labour costs would cause Seaway tolls to rise and drive freight to other supply lines, including coastal ports and trucks, he said. Tolls to move through the Welland Canal are about $45,000 to $60,000. A freighter making the trip to Thunder Bay is billed about $150,000 to $200,000, including fuel and pilotage charges.
Lana Payne, the national president of Unifor, said the hurdles to a deal with the Seaway are wage increases, the employer’s history of not following the collective agreement and a “toxic” workplace culture. She denied that negotiators are pushing for an agreement similar to those reached at Ford and GM.
“We are dealing with 1950s labour relations, and it isn’t 1950,” Ms. Payne said.
The strike is the first to hit the Seaway since 1968, she said. “They need to ask themselves, ‘Why now?’”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Quebec Premier François Legault issued a joint statement that called for a quick end to the strike. “The economic stakes are too high, with tens of millions of dollars lost every day the seaway continues to be closed,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, Le Dumont-D’Urville remained tied up at Toronto on Thursday. Passengers are staying on board at night and taking sightseeing bus trips during the day.
The ship’s owner, Ponant Co., did not respond to e-mailed interview requests.
According to Marinetraffic.com on Thursday, 15 cargo ships were at anchor at the mouth of the Welland Canal on Lake Ontario, with another nine at the south end, on Lake Erie. It was a similar picture at Montreal, Thunder Bay, Duluth, Minn., and other ports on the waterway that links global markets with the agricultural and industrial heartland of North America.
Eric Atkins