Activities resumed Saturday morning at the Port of Montreal, after a five-day lockout.
• Also read: Lockout at the Port of Montreal: resumption of operations required from Saturday morning
• Also read: Ottawa orders the resumption of work at the ports of Montreal and Quebec
Earlier this week, the Canada Industrial Relations Board forced longshore workers back to work.
And on Saturday, there was a lot of action at the Montreal port; many trucks were transporting containers to try to make up for the delay caused by the lockout imposed last Sunday by the employer.
This decision followed the rejection of the employer’s offer by 99.7% of workers.
The longshoremen did not want to react to this return to work, but the truckers had their say.
“The majority of drivers are self-employed drivers, the rest of us work for ourselves,” said a trucker. “When you don’t work, you have nothing.”
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“I would have stayed at home,” another man said.
Other employees interviewed by TVA Nouvelles all seemed rather happy to be back at work on Saturday.
“I didn’t work last week. I’m happy to go back to work. I didn’t work for four days. It was difficult. The reopened port is good for my family, for making money,” testified a trucker.
“This is good news. I often come to work in the morning. I stayed at home for 10 days, but now I’m coming back,” said another individual.
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“A lot of discontent”
The Canadian government became directly involved in ending the labor dispute, which would have had significant consequences for the country’s economy if it had continued.
“It’s certain that interrupting working conditions like that, there will be a lot of discontent and that doesn’t solve anything,” explained Marc Ranger, former Quebec director of the Canadian Union of Public Employees during a interview on the show Quebec Morning.
The port authority estimates that it will take several weeks to make up for the delays of the last few days. The economic impacts are major, according to port officials: around $400 million in goods per day of shutdown.
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“It is certain that to start the recovery, we need several hundred people who are hard at work at the port, which can actually represent a weekend that is a little different from the regular weekends during the year,” mentioned Mélanie Nadeau, vice-president of communications for the Port of Montreal.
When the port opened on Saturday morning, 5,000 containers were waiting. In total, 22 ships will be anticipated over the coming days. Ms. Nadeau hopes for a return a little more “to normal” on Monday.
The union representing dock workers at the port of Montreal has already indicated its intention to challenge in court the decision of the federal Minister of Labor to end the lockout, and has not responded to interview requests from TVA Nouvelles.
