Community for the city of Vancouver, BC
I must say, it has been so so nice and peaceful in the northern parts of East Van recently because of this. Nonetheless, I hope the port workers get what they want.
I really just don’t get the logic behind not giving them what they want. Fun fact: the demands the union has is less than $5.5 billion
Here's what I don't understand... Why can't workers get more of the profits they help generate?
It's not the workers who are jeopardizing the economy, it's management who won't consider giving workers a fair increase so they can have a decent (not opulent, not luxurious) standard of living.
With inflation at the levels it's been at lately and raises, even got union workers, barely keeping up, they should just give the workers what they're asking for if they're so worried about the precious economy.
Union doesn't want automation while the port does. Automation makes other ports much more efficient than ours.
Well, they are welcome to fire everyone and automate it all/hire new staff for the remaining position. But I think that's not so easy, otherwise they would have already done it.
Ports around the world have done it. Just not Vancouver.
What's stopping Vancouver Port management from doing it then? Why haven't they already? It's on them, not the workers they choose to employ.
Without many details in the story it's hard to understand what they are asking for but I suspect much of it is around delaying the automation that modern ports are moving to implement globally to reduce the risk of workplace hazards.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/port-vancouver-rating-1.6873992
This has been a common theme with the ILWA pushing back on modernization to retain jobs at the cost of enormous expense due to accidents, injury and cargo loss due to human error. Like any other industry that gets automated, there needs to be a transition and I hope that's part of these negotiations.
The world is coasting through a post-pandemic global cargo slowdown so terminal operators are trying to save money, so the timing for this makes it extra hard to just start handing out raises.
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/global-container-freight-stuck-in-doldrums/