rt_0891
July 18th, 2005, 01:56 AM
What an embarrassment. :no: If it drags on any longer, it will end up being a big economic disaster for the region & the port.
Port strike a boon to U.S. cities
Seattle and Tacoma terminals will be allowed to accept containers originally destined for B.C.
Fiona Anderson
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, July 16, 2005
The dispute between truck drivers and transport companies that has backlogged container traffic at Lower Mainland ports took on an international tone Friday as U.S. Customs issued a notice Friday telling Washington state shippers and terminals how they are to handle containers expected to be diverted from Vancouver.
Terminals in Seattle and Tacoma will be allowed to accept containers originally destined for Vancouver without satisfying tough customs rules, provided the ship is currently en route, Mike Milne, press officer with the U.S. Customs said in an interview.
The ship must also be scheduled to arrive in Vancouver on or after July 18 and must provide Customs with complete cargo information, Milne said. Customs officers will have the option of allowing the container to be off-loaded with or without an examination, or they can tell the ship it must keep the container.
Any containers not currently en route will have to satisfy Customs' "24-hour rule" which requires shippers to provide the U.S. with cargo information before it is loaded onto U.S.-bound ships.
The Port of Seattle is expecting to receive its first diverted containers this weekend, port spokesman Mick Shultz said. These containers will be stored at the terminal or at another storage site, where they will remain until the end of the strike.
"The idea is not to truck them to Canada," Shultz said. "The idea is to keep them here temporarily and once things are put straight in Vancouver put them back on the ships."
Terminal operators need all the space they have to handle their long-term customers, Shultz said. Devoting terminal space for container storage for non-local customers is quite a burden.
Impact from the three-week-old work stoppage, which has crowded Vancouver's terminals with stacks of containers destined for the local Vancouver market, is being felt across the country, the Vancouver Port Authority and Sears Canada said in a joint news release.
"What is essentially believed to be a local problem because it is the local market that is affected has now obviously stretched and become a national issue," Capt. Gordon Houston, president and CEO of the Vancouver Port Authority said in an interview.
"This situation is now making our customers -- some very important customers -- tell us that they are now looking for other gateways because Vancouver is becoming unreliable," Houston said. "This sort of thing gives us a terrible reputation."
Sears is now shipping its inbound cargo by rail to Calgary and Toronto, instead of by truck to its distribution centre in Port Coquitlam, Brian Gerrior, national manager with Sears said in an interview. Goods bound for Vancouver are then trucked back from Calgary.
At some point, rail traffic is going to get congested and that will affect the whole country, Gerrior said.
And as it gets more difficult to ship through Vancouver, importers are going to look for alternatives, Gerrior said.
"I think many companies now are looking at what can they do to avoid the Port of Vancouver," Gerrior said. "If business pulls away permanently then that doesn't help B.C."
MW Industries is an exporter that has also had to find alternative routes to get its products -- compressors and dispensers for fueling natural gas vehicles -- to market.
"We have 89 per cent of our product being exported [so] it is not an option for us not to be able to ship," Kirk Livingston, IMW's vice-president of operations said.
Before the work stoppage, the Chilliwack company shipped all its products through the Port of Vancouver. Now it is shipping some goods by train to Halifax, and trucking others to Miami and Seattle, depending on the ultimate destination. Not only does this double or triple freight costs, it has also required IMW to amend its customer agreements which required that goods be shipped from Vancouver.
"The cost to a medium-size company like IMW has been fairly significant," Livingston said.
And once the strike is over, the company will have to assess how it wants to operate in the future.
"We don't want to come across as being non-sympathetic to the situation," Livingston said. "However from our perspective there's a lot of other potential jobs that could be lost in the province. We are having to look at everything from using other ports or making our product in the particular markets we are selling into that would avoid this kind of situation."
Informal talks between the truck drivers and the transport companies were continuing Friday, Craig Paterson, lawyer for the drivers said.
fionaanderson@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
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Port in a storm
What's at stake in the three-week-old Vancouver port dispute? Who's involved and who's affected? You can't tell the instigators from the bystanders without a program, so today Business BC offers a guide to the fracas that is holding up $30 million a day in container goods
Fiona Anderson
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, July 16, 2005
THE DISPUTE
Vancouver's container truck drivers have been staging a work stoppage since June 27, stopping all short-haul container traffic from moving to and from local ports.Their concern, in a nutshell, is that rates paid to them by transport companies are so low, some days they can make as little as $50 for a 10-hour day. Rising fuel costs have made the situation even worse.
PARTIES TO THE DISPUTE
Vancouver Container Truckers Association: This organization has approximately 1,000 members, all of them truck drivers who transport containers to and from the ports. The majority of the members own their own rigs. About 250 drivers are unionized either as part of Teamsters Union Local No. 31 or the Christian Labour Association of Canada, Local No. 67.
The transport companies or brokers: About 49 companies retain the services of the independent drivers. Some of the companies own their own trucks but those are not part of the dispute.
THE FACILITATOR
Vince Ready was appointed jointly by the federal and provincial governments as a facilitator to lead talks aimed at resolving the dispute. He has met with the parties, either separately or jointly, in meetings over five days, starting July 2 but so far the talks have led nowhere. Ready said Thursday that the parties were too far apart for meaningful talks to continue.
THE MINISTERS
B.C. Labour Minister Mike de Jong and federal Labour Minister Joe Fontana appointed Ready and have been spearheading the governments' involvement in the dispute, even though they both are quick to point out this is not technically a labour dispute as most of the drivers are independent truck owners that contract their services to the brokers and the work stoppage is not technically a strike.
THE AFFECTED PARTIES:
The Ports
The Vancouver Port Authority owns three terminals that it leases to private operators. Centerm, near the Seabus terminal, is operated by P&O Ports. Vanterm, which is east of Centerm, and Deltaport, in Delta, are operated by TSI Terminals. The Fraser River Port Authority owns one terminal, which is operated by Fraser Surrey Docks Ltd.
What's at stake: In 2004 1.6 million TEUs (a TEU is equivalent to one 20-ft. container) passed through the Port of Vancouver, an increase of eight per cent from 2003. Of these about 60 per cent are shipped to and from the ports by rail. The remaining 40 per cent are shipped by local container trucks.
The VPA estimates that $30 million dollars worth of goods are transported by truck to and from the ports every day. The loss of total economic output from having the goods sitting on the dock is $30 million a week.
The customers
Many retailers, such as Hudson's Bay Company and Sears Canada receive goods by container through the ports in Vancouver. Hudson's Bay Company has sued the VCTA and its executive for damages it says it is suffering as a result of the work stoppage.
Exporters, such as Canfor Corp. and manufacturer IMW Industries Ltd., have had to find alternate ways of getting their goods to market, at added costs.
The shipping lines:
Shipping lines such as Maersk Inc. are no longer able to unload containers bound for trucks at some local terminals, which have no more room to store them. All terminals are expect to reach capacity by the weekend.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
Port strike a boon to U.S. cities
Seattle and Tacoma terminals will be allowed to accept containers originally destined for B.C.
Fiona Anderson
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, July 16, 2005
The dispute between truck drivers and transport companies that has backlogged container traffic at Lower Mainland ports took on an international tone Friday as U.S. Customs issued a notice Friday telling Washington state shippers and terminals how they are to handle containers expected to be diverted from Vancouver.
Terminals in Seattle and Tacoma will be allowed to accept containers originally destined for Vancouver without satisfying tough customs rules, provided the ship is currently en route, Mike Milne, press officer with the U.S. Customs said in an interview.
The ship must also be scheduled to arrive in Vancouver on or after July 18 and must provide Customs with complete cargo information, Milne said. Customs officers will have the option of allowing the container to be off-loaded with or without an examination, or they can tell the ship it must keep the container.
Any containers not currently en route will have to satisfy Customs' "24-hour rule" which requires shippers to provide the U.S. with cargo information before it is loaded onto U.S.-bound ships.
The Port of Seattle is expecting to receive its first diverted containers this weekend, port spokesman Mick Shultz said. These containers will be stored at the terminal or at another storage site, where they will remain until the end of the strike.
"The idea is not to truck them to Canada," Shultz said. "The idea is to keep them here temporarily and once things are put straight in Vancouver put them back on the ships."
Terminal operators need all the space they have to handle their long-term customers, Shultz said. Devoting terminal space for container storage for non-local customers is quite a burden.
Impact from the three-week-old work stoppage, which has crowded Vancouver's terminals with stacks of containers destined for the local Vancouver market, is being felt across the country, the Vancouver Port Authority and Sears Canada said in a joint news release.
"What is essentially believed to be a local problem because it is the local market that is affected has now obviously stretched and become a national issue," Capt. Gordon Houston, president and CEO of the Vancouver Port Authority said in an interview.
"This situation is now making our customers -- some very important customers -- tell us that they are now looking for other gateways because Vancouver is becoming unreliable," Houston said. "This sort of thing gives us a terrible reputation."
Sears is now shipping its inbound cargo by rail to Calgary and Toronto, instead of by truck to its distribution centre in Port Coquitlam, Brian Gerrior, national manager with Sears said in an interview. Goods bound for Vancouver are then trucked back from Calgary.
At some point, rail traffic is going to get congested and that will affect the whole country, Gerrior said.
And as it gets more difficult to ship through Vancouver, importers are going to look for alternatives, Gerrior said.
"I think many companies now are looking at what can they do to avoid the Port of Vancouver," Gerrior said. "If business pulls away permanently then that doesn't help B.C."
MW Industries is an exporter that has also had to find alternative routes to get its products -- compressors and dispensers for fueling natural gas vehicles -- to market.
"We have 89 per cent of our product being exported [so] it is not an option for us not to be able to ship," Kirk Livingston, IMW's vice-president of operations said.
Before the work stoppage, the Chilliwack company shipped all its products through the Port of Vancouver. Now it is shipping some goods by train to Halifax, and trucking others to Miami and Seattle, depending on the ultimate destination. Not only does this double or triple freight costs, it has also required IMW to amend its customer agreements which required that goods be shipped from Vancouver.
"The cost to a medium-size company like IMW has been fairly significant," Livingston said.
And once the strike is over, the company will have to assess how it wants to operate in the future.
"We don't want to come across as being non-sympathetic to the situation," Livingston said. "However from our perspective there's a lot of other potential jobs that could be lost in the province. We are having to look at everything from using other ports or making our product in the particular markets we are selling into that would avoid this kind of situation."
Informal talks between the truck drivers and the transport companies were continuing Friday, Craig Paterson, lawyer for the drivers said.
fionaanderson@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Port in a storm
What's at stake in the three-week-old Vancouver port dispute? Who's involved and who's affected? You can't tell the instigators from the bystanders without a program, so today Business BC offers a guide to the fracas that is holding up $30 million a day in container goods
Fiona Anderson
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, July 16, 2005
THE DISPUTE
Vancouver's container truck drivers have been staging a work stoppage since June 27, stopping all short-haul container traffic from moving to and from local ports.Their concern, in a nutshell, is that rates paid to them by transport companies are so low, some days they can make as little as $50 for a 10-hour day. Rising fuel costs have made the situation even worse.
PARTIES TO THE DISPUTE
Vancouver Container Truckers Association: This organization has approximately 1,000 members, all of them truck drivers who transport containers to and from the ports. The majority of the members own their own rigs. About 250 drivers are unionized either as part of Teamsters Union Local No. 31 or the Christian Labour Association of Canada, Local No. 67.
The transport companies or brokers: About 49 companies retain the services of the independent drivers. Some of the companies own their own trucks but those are not part of the dispute.
THE FACILITATOR
Vince Ready was appointed jointly by the federal and provincial governments as a facilitator to lead talks aimed at resolving the dispute. He has met with the parties, either separately or jointly, in meetings over five days, starting July 2 but so far the talks have led nowhere. Ready said Thursday that the parties were too far apart for meaningful talks to continue.
THE MINISTERS
B.C. Labour Minister Mike de Jong and federal Labour Minister Joe Fontana appointed Ready and have been spearheading the governments' involvement in the dispute, even though they both are quick to point out this is not technically a labour dispute as most of the drivers are independent truck owners that contract their services to the brokers and the work stoppage is not technically a strike.
THE AFFECTED PARTIES:
The Ports
The Vancouver Port Authority owns three terminals that it leases to private operators. Centerm, near the Seabus terminal, is operated by P&O Ports. Vanterm, which is east of Centerm, and Deltaport, in Delta, are operated by TSI Terminals. The Fraser River Port Authority owns one terminal, which is operated by Fraser Surrey Docks Ltd.
What's at stake: In 2004 1.6 million TEUs (a TEU is equivalent to one 20-ft. container) passed through the Port of Vancouver, an increase of eight per cent from 2003. Of these about 60 per cent are shipped to and from the ports by rail. The remaining 40 per cent are shipped by local container trucks.
The VPA estimates that $30 million dollars worth of goods are transported by truck to and from the ports every day. The loss of total economic output from having the goods sitting on the dock is $30 million a week.
The customers
Many retailers, such as Hudson's Bay Company and Sears Canada receive goods by container through the ports in Vancouver. Hudson's Bay Company has sued the VCTA and its executive for damages it says it is suffering as a result of the work stoppage.
Exporters, such as Canfor Corp. and manufacturer IMW Industries Ltd., have had to find alternate ways of getting their goods to market, at added costs.
The shipping lines:
Shipping lines such as Maersk Inc. are no longer able to unload containers bound for trucks at some local terminals, which have no more room to store them. All terminals are expect to reach capacity by the weekend.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005