When it comes to whether Port Metro Vancouver will experience a crippling drayage strike like it did last March, the ball is in union and non-union drivers’ court. The provincial government on Wednesday said it would make two changes to minimum drayage rates set to take effect Feb. 1. But Unifor, the union, and United Truckers Association, which represents non-union drivers, have not yet said whether the changes to the system aimed at reducing the undercutting of rates were enough to prevent a threatened strike. Drayage drivers have been threatening to strike for weeks if the province didn’t reverse changes to a plan agreed to in March – which ended last year’s three-week long strike – to how minimum rates are set.
If a strike were to occur, it would affect mostly local cargo moving to and from the port and regional distribution centers. Shippers moving goods by rail into central or eastern Canada or into points within the U.S. would be largely unaffected.
Source: Journal of Commerce