Canada’s two largest Pacific ports — Vancouver and Prince Rupert — remained at a standstill Friday as a strike by the port employees’ union hit the one-week mark. Ships are starting to pile up at anchorages and rail operations serving the U.S. have effectively halted.
The British Columbia Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) claimed Thursday that the strike is already having “disastrous economic impacts,” with $4.6 billion in cargo affected because the strike began on July 1. The BCMEA maintained it has offered “significant wage increases.”
International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) Canada, representing dockworkers, countered that the BCMEA “has launched a smear campaign targeting their very own employees.”
ILWU President Rob Ashton alleged that the BCMEA is “funding a dirty-tricks media campaign, using anonymous sources to selectively leak misleading information to reporters” in order that BCMEA employers won’t must “dip into their massive post-pandemic profits to offer their employees slightly more.”
Either side claim the opposite should return to the bargaining table.
“A deal might be reached if ILWU Canada wants one,” said the BCMEA. “We all know that the perfect deals are made on the table, and this is strictly what we’re proposing the parties do.”
Based on the union: “We’re willing to look past the smears and insults if it means we will return to the place where respectful negotiations and an honest deal can occur: the bargaining table.”
Vancouver anchorages filling up
Ocean carrier Hapag-Lloyd said Friday, “Considering the present situation in Vancouver, ships are slowing down or heading to anchorage,” with Vancouver’s anchorage occupancy “presently at 70%.”
THE Alliance — whose members are Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, Yang Ming and HMM — has seven container ships en path to Vancouver scheduled to reach over the following week. Hapag-Lloyd warned customers of “the numerous and evolving situation in western Canada.” It reported that no imports or exports are being served, either by rail or truck.
Ship-position data from MarineTraffic showed 17 industrial vessels waiting off British Columbia ports on Friday: six container ships, five bulkers, one general cargo ship and one product tanker off Vancouver; and three container ships and one liquefied petroleum gas carrier off Prince Rupert.
Rail flows to US nose-dive
Vancouver handled 3,557,294 twenty-foot equivalent units of containerized cargo in 2022, including 1,844,642 TEUs of laden imports. Prince Rupert had total throughput of 1,035,639 TEUs last yr, including 535,949 TEUs of laden imports.
The 2 Canadian ports matter to U.S. importers because a significant slice of Vancouver and Prince Rupert containerized import cargo is moved by rail to Chicago and other American destinations. As previously reported by FreightWaves, rail moves are being heavily impacted and will take weeks and even months to normalize after the strike ends.
Data from FreightWaves SONAR that tracks rail moves of loaded international containers from Vancouver and Prince Rupert shows volumes falling off a cliff in the primary week of July in consequence of the strike.