Striking federal government employees closed down grain exports out of Vancouver March 15 as part of an escalating union push to win a more generous contract offer from Ottawa.
It led to anger in Parliament and predictions from the grain industry that Canada’s export reputation will be damaged.
“Things will start to back up and sales will be affected,” Marilyn Kapitany, director of industry services at the Canadian Grain Commission, said March 15. “It is a very serious situation.”
In Parliament, a defiant treasury board president Marcel MassŽ told Reform questioner Howard Hil-strom that the government will not bend. It would cost taxpayers too much to meet union wage demands, he said.
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“In this case, we have to tell the blue collar workers they have to be reasonable, they have to accept rates that all other civil servants have accepted.”
But agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief, just back from a trip to Japan, acknowledged it is a risky strategy that could cost farmers. Already, foreign buyers are worried.
“I had an opportunity last week to speak to some of the purchasers of our products,” Vanclief said. “They are beginning to get nervous. The unfortunate thing is, it is the producers who are going to be hurt when the product is not shipped.”
Ed Guest, secretary-manager of the Western Grain Elevators Association in Winnipeg, said it is frustrating to see the industry sideswiped by a labor dispute over which it has no control.
Total shutdown
March 15 was the first day the 70 grain commission employees represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada totally shut down Vancouver grain shipping. PSAC had been using a strategy of rotating strikes to pressure the government.
Strike organizers did not indicate if the picketing at the five Vancouver grain terminals would continue after Monday.
But PSAC leaders last week indicated they will be targeting politically sensitive grain movement as they turn up the heat on government. Negotiations collapsed March 12 with the two sides far apart.
The government’s 14,500 blue-collar workers have not had a pay increase in six years.
“We didn’t want to do too much harm to farmers and others because obviously our fight is not with the Canadian public. It’s with the federal government,” PSAC president Daryl Bean said in a television interview in Saskatoon last week.
“But if we can’t get the government to move, then obviously we have to hit harbors and grain, borders and airports, which we tried to stay away from.”
In Ottawa, Larry Leng, president of PSAC’s agricultural union, said in an interview the union is sensitive to the fact that farmers are caught in the middle.
He said officials from the grain elevator industry had asked the union to avoid disrupting grain flow.
“We tried to do that, but then they did not put pressure on the treasury board to give us a fair settlement, so it was all one way,” said Leng.
On Parliament Hill last week, Kapitany told MPs that managers had been able to keep the grain flowing during the sporadic rotating strikes at west coast elevators.
“I don’t think sales have been lost yet,” she said in an interview last week after appearing at the House of Commons agriculture committee. “But our managers have been working long, long hours and cannot go much longer …. And of course, they could close it right down.”
Monday, with five ships loading at the terminals, they did.
