08) VANCOUVER TRUCKERS OWED MILLIONS BY COMPANIES

 

PV Vancouver Bureau

 

            The long struggle to win decent wages and working conditions for 1800 truckers who deliver goods into and out of Metro Vancouver’s port just got an important boost with the revelation of an audit that found six container trucking companies had underpaid their workers.

 

            That news is “just the tip of the iceberg”, according to one of the unions that represents port truckers.

 

            “There’s widespread non-payment here for the union and non-union companies,” Garin McGarrigle, B.C. director for Unifor, told the Business in Vancouver website. “We think it’s in the millions that people are owed.”

 

            On Sept. 29, B.C.’s Ministry of Transportation stated that an audit of six companies conducted by Port Metro Vancouver (PMV) found they did not pay drivers the retroactive rates required by an agreement signed last December.

 

            In an email to Business in Vancouver, ministry staff wrote that the province's Office of Trucking Commissioner is still notifying the companies, which could face fines or suspended or revoked licenses.

 

            The long-simmering dispute predates a one-month trucking strike in March 2014 that halted shipments at the port. For years, truckers have become increasingly angry over low wages and a pick-up system that forced them to wait for hours with no pay. The truckers say they were the victims of price undercutting by companies in the industry.

 

            Last December, an agreement mediated by Vince Ready won higher rates for the truckers, retroactive to April 3, 2014.

 

            “Throughout that entire process, it was made very clear to operators and companies that operate at the port that they had an obligation, a legal obligation, to pay their workers what the regulation stipulated,” said BC Transportation Minster Todd Stone. “They all signed statutory declarations indicating that they didn't owe their trucker employees any wages. Clearly, several have been found to be in contravention of that.”

 

            While the Ready agreement was a big victory for the truckers, the companies have largely refused to implement the deal. For their part, the unions objected to the appointment of Andy Smith, a long-time president of the B.C. Maritime Employers Association which speaks for ship owners and terminal operators, as the province’s trucking commissioner. (Smith has recently resigned.)

 

            A new truck licensing system devised by Port Metro Vancouver was designed to reduce the number of trucks and calm the heated competition for jobs that led to rate undercutting. But after most truckers were frozen out of work by the new system, they challenged PMV in court, winning a ruling that the system was unfair to applicants. However, PMV has now introduced a new rule that trucks have to be less than 10 years old, allegedly to reduce air pollution.

 

            In effect, the port is refusing to pay drivers the rates they were owed from 2014, at the same time as it demands that drivers spend tens of thousands of dollars on new trucks.     

 

(The above article is from the October 16-31, 2015, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)