Vancouver Port's Truckers Dispute: The Basics

What, in a nutshell, is driving the labour dispute at Port Metro Vancouver? For years container truckers have been demanding better pay rates and an end to long unpaid waits at port terminals. They also say rates should be standardized and enforced by auditing across the trucking sector to put an end to undercutting. (Tempers have flared to the point last Sunday when a truck driver was reportedly hit in the head by a large rock as he was driving 70 km/h along Highway 17.)

A system of audits put in place in 2005, the last time a truckers labour dispute stalled port operations, is meant to keep a level playing field for various kinds of truck operations, and to provide a level of transparency. But a Tyee investigation also published today reveals ways some operators have run afoul of the regulators and have been disciplined since 2009.

Here is a primer on the complex world of truckers who deliver to Port Metro Vancouver:

The Players

The United Truckers Association (UTA) is a non-profit group, and says it represents more than 1,000 members, including employee drivers and non-union owner-operators. These were the first to park their trucks, and Unifor joined their strike a week later.

Unifor-Vancouver Container Truckers' Association's (VCTA), represents the bulk of the unionized truckers at the Port Metro Vancouver. Gavin McGarrigle, B.C. area director for Unifor, says Unifor-VCTA represents about 400 members, though membership fluctuates depending on time of year. Unifor-VCTA's collective agreement expired in June 2012.

The B.C. Trucking Association (BCTA) says it is a member-based, non-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization, and the recognised voice of the provincial motor carrier industry, representing over 1,200 truck and motor coach fleets and over 225 suppliers to the industry. BCTA members operate over 13,000 vehicles, employing 26,000 people.

The authority officially called the "Vancouver Fraser Port Authority" owns land that it leases to private sector marine container terminals. Many times when people refer to the "ports," they mean those terminals. Port Metro Vancouver (PMV) is another term for the federal government overseer.

The Port has a reservation system, and only truckling companies have access to it. So a company will dispatch an employee driver (who drives a company truck) or an IO (who drives his own under contract). An IO can only be contracted to one company at a time.

The System

Under the Truck Licensing System -- which was established by Vince Ready as an arrangement to end the last, six-week truckers strike of 2005 -- there two kinds of trucking operations, set by [1] licenses, and [2] permits.

The first are licenses issued to what the Port calls Full Service Operators (FSOs), that is companies. The second are permits issued to independent operators (IOs). Both pay fees to PMV, $300 for each IO, while the company pays $300 for each truck in its fleet.

Unifor is demanding increased pay rates and that the rates are standardized and enforced across the sector to put an end to under-cutting. By under-cutting they mean that the non-union truckers could push their per-trip rates to below what a union driver would charge as his per hour equivalent for the same trip. If the same hourly rate were set across the board, this would end.

Rates paid vary between $95 and $185 per container moved. A May 2013 study by Asia Pacific Gateway found that container drivers were paid an average of $15.51 an hour compared to the B.C. trucking industry median of $23 an hour.

The Audit Process

Even though the federal government owns the Port Metro Vancouver lands, the B.C. Transportation Ministry manages the regulations there. Truckers' wages are not set by the port, but by individual trucking companies. Yet PMV asks the B.C. ministry's Container Truck Dispute Resolution Program to conducts audits, to see if Full Service Operators are paying Independent Operators (IOs) the minimum rates set by Vince Ready in a 2005 agreement, which applies regardless of whether companies pay their IOs on a per-trip basis. (The companies are picked at random, or based on a complaint.) After the audit, the Program sends a summary of its findings to PMV, and while the Program sometimes makes recommendations to PMV on sanctions, the final decisions are made by PMV.

The rates for IOs were enacted by the federal government -- in the Port Authorities Operation Regulation -- in response to the 1999 and 2005 strikes. As noted by program investigator Michael Fleming, "a key purpose of the minimum rate floor was to provide a level playing field by insuring the IOs would be all be paid a fair level of remuneration and all trucking companies would be paid the same rates, as a means of preventing the rampant undercutting of rates that led to the two disruptions."

The scope of these audits is limited to cover by-trip (not hourly) rates of pay by "drayage" companies to IOs. To assess the company's compliance, the investigators calculated the amount of time IOs spent on each job, multiplied it by the hourly rate, and then compared it to the per-trip rate set in the 2005 agreement. Based on that method, it was clear that some IOs had been paid both above and below the minimum rate.

The port believes that these independent drivers need some more protection because, by contrast, companies' employees are paid under Employment Standards rules, and it is presumed the union would investigate and deal with rate violations for union drivers. Although the UTA tries to help its drivers, it has fewer legal powers than a union because it is just a non-profit association.

Unifor told The Tyee that it asked the B.C. government to send in Employment Standard investigators but got no reply.