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The pandemic has put unprecedented strain on global supply chains -– and also on the workers who’ve kept those systems running under tough conditions. It looks like many of them have had enough.
A surge in strikes and other labor protests is threatening industries all over the world, and especially the ones that involve moving goods, people and energy around. From railway and port workers in the US to natural-gas fields in Australia and truck drivers in Peru, employees are demanding a better deal as inflation eats into their wages.
Precisely because their work is so crucial to the world economy right now –- with supply chains still fragile and job markets tight –- those workers have leverage at the bargaining table. Any disruptions caused by labor disputes could add to the shortages and soaring prices that threaten to trigger recessions.
That is emboldening employees in transportation and logistics -– which spans everything from warehouses to trucking — to stand up to their bosses, according to Katy Fox-Hodess, a lecturer in employment relations at Sheffield University Management School in the UK. She points to already-tough working conditions in the industry after years of deregulation.
Workers Bear Brunt
“Global supply chains weren’t calibrated to deal with a crisis like the pandemic, and employers have really pushed that crisis onto the backs of workers,” Fox-Hodess says.
For their part, central bankers have been fretting about workers getting paid too much and setting off a wage-price spiral like the one that sent inflation soaring in the 1970s. In fact there’s not much sign of that, with wage gains generally lagging behind prices, partly because organized labor is broadly less powerful than it was back then.
But that may mask a different problem. Much of today’s inflation stems from specific chokepoints -– and labor unrest in those key industries could have wider ripple effects on prices. A threatened strike by Norway’s energy workers, for example, sent fresh tremors through European natural-gas markets earlier this month.
There’s also a risk to the rebalancing of economies. In the pandemic, people bought more goods at the expense of services like plane tickets or hotel rooms, putting pressure on supply chains and stoking inflation. The expectation is that spending habits will revert to normal, with consumers eager to take a trip again. But strikes by cabin staff at Ryanair Holdings Plc, or airport workers in Paris and London, are adding to the travel turmoil that may put would-be tourists off.
Here’s a roundup of some of the hot spots of labor unrest rattling the global economy.
Trains and Trucks…
In the US, where a long-declining labor movement is showing signs of awakening as unions establish footholds at companies like Starbucks Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., some of the biggest disputes are in the transportation industry. Looming over the country’s already battered supply chains is the threat of a rail strike that could paralyze the movement of goods.
After two years of unsuccessful negotiations with the nation’s largest railways, President Joe Biden this month established a panel to resolve a deep rift between 115,000 workers and their employers. The Presidential Emergency Board has until mid-August to come up with a contract plan that’s acceptable to both sides.
“There’s a very tight labor market, so that puts workers in a position where they have both an accumulation of lots of grievances and they feel empowered,” Cornell University associate professor Eli Friedman said. The school tracked 260 strikes and five lockouts in the US involving about 140,000 employees in 2021, leading to about 3.27 million strike days.
In the UK, train drivers say they will strike on July 30, and two other transportation unions are also planning 24-hour walkouts next week. It’s not just passengers who will suffer: A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s No. 2 container shipping line, warned that those actions would cause “significant disruption” to the movement of freight.
Canada has seen strikes on its railways, too — part of the country’s biggest wave of labor strife for decades. Tens of thousands of construction workers also walked off the job earlier this summer. In May, there were 1.1 million worker-days lost to stoppages, the highest monthly total since November 1997.
In many countries, truck drivers protesting against the high cost of fuel have been at the forefront of labor unrest. Truckers in Peru are holding a nationwide strike this month. In Argentina, roadblocks by drivers in June lasted a week, delaying about 350,000 tons of crops -– roughly 10 small ship cargoes. In South Africa, drivers blocked roads including a key trade link to neighboring Mozambique, in a demonstration against record pump prices.
…And Ports and Ships
The labor dispute that US economy watchers worry about most is the one involving more than 22,000 dockworkers on the West Coast. Their contract expired at the start of July, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union is negotiating a new one. Both sides say they want to avoid stoppages that could shut down ports handling almost half of America’s imports.
Meanwhile the Port of Oakland, California’s third-busiest, had to close some of its gates and terminals this past week -– adding to the wait time for imported goods — because truckers blocked access in protest against a gig-work law that could take 70,000 drivers off the road.
German ports are scrambling after a two-day strike earlier this month worsened cargo bottlenecks that are snarling shipping and hurting Europe’s largest economy.
In South Korea, the shipbuilding industry has seen a surge in orders amid the supply-chain crunch. Workers have been protesting for several weeks at a dock for Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. in the southern city of Geoje, demanding a 30% pay hike and an easing of their workload. The action has already delayed the production and launch of three ships, and President Yoon Suk Yeol urged ministers to resolve it. A resolution looked to be close as of this weekend.
Air-Travel Chaos
Labor disputes have contributed to Europe’s summer of travel chaos, with air and rail companies already short-staffed after the pandemic squeeze on labor markets. Carriers including Ryanair, EasyJet Plc and Scandinavia’s SAS have seen their schedules disrupted by strikes.
A walkout at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris forced the cancellation of flights, and London’s Heathrow looked at risk of a similar fate before the Unite Union called off a proposed walkout on Thursday, saying it had received a “sustainably improved offer” of pay raises.
Even in normally relaxed Jamaica, flight controllers staged a one-day strike on May 12 to complain about low pay and long hours, closing Jamaican airspace and disrupting travel for more than 10,000 people in the Caribbean island. At least one plane was forced to return to Canada mid-trip.
Energy Crunch
A strike by oil workers in Norway threatened another blow to Europe’s energy supplies, which have already been hit by the war in Ukraine with reduced gas flows from Russia. The dispute was resolved when the government stepped in to propose a compulsory wage board. The country’s labor minister said she had no choice but to intervene, because of the potential for “far-reaching societal impacts for all of Europe.” A further escalation of the strike could have shut down more than half of Norway’s gas exports.
In Australia, one of the world’s top exporters of liquefied natural gas, workers on Shell Plc’s Prelude floating LNG production facility in Western Australia have extended industrial action until Aug. 4, according to the Offshore Alliance union. The stoppage has halted loading at an export facility, exacerbating global shortages of the fuel.
Labor groups at South African state-owned utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. won a pay increase that roughly keeps pace with inflation after a weeklong walkout that worsened the country’s power outages — and was illegal under laws that bar Eskom workers from striking because the provision of electricity is considered an essential service
Almost seven years since news broke of an alleged conspiracy to fix the price of packaged bread across Canada, the saga isn’t over: the Competition Bureau continues to investigate the companies that may have been involved, and two class-action lawsuits continue to work their way through the courts.
Here’s a timeline of key events in the bread price-fixing case.
Oct. 31, 2017: The Competition Bureau says it’s investigating allegations of bread price-fixing and that it was granted search warrants in the case. Several grocers confirm they are co-operating in the probe.
Dec. 19, 2017: Loblaw and George Weston say they participated in an “industry-wide price-fixing arrangement” to raise the price of packaged bread. The companies say they have been co-operating in the Competition Bureau’s investigation since March 2015, when they self-reported to the bureau upon discovering anti-competitive behaviour, and are receiving immunity from prosecution. They announce they are offering $25 gift cards to customers amid the ongoing investigation into alleged bread price-fixing.
Jan. 31, 2018: In court documents, the Competition Bureau says at least $1.50 was added to the price of a loaf of bread between about 2001 and 2016.
Dec. 20, 2019: A class-action lawsuit in a Quebec court against multiple grocers and food companies is certified against a number of companies allegedly involved in bread price-fixing, including Loblaw, George Weston, Metro, Sobeys, Walmart Canada, Canada Bread and Giant Tiger (which have all denied involvement, except for Loblaw and George Weston, which later settled with the plaintiffs).
Dec. 31, 2021: A class-action lawsuit in an Ontario court covering all Canadian residents except those in Quebec who bought packaged bread from a company named in the suit is certified against roughly the same group of companies.
June 21, 2023: Bakery giant Canada Bread Co. is fined $50 million after pleading guilty to four counts of price-fixing under the Competition Act as part of the Competition Bureau’s ongoing investigation.
Oct. 25 2023: Canada Bread files a statement of defence in the Ontario class action denying participating in the alleged conspiracy and saying any anti-competitive behaviour it participated in was at the direction and to the benefit of its then-majority owner Maple Leaf Foods, which is not a defendant in the case (neither is its current owner Grupo Bimbo). Maple Leaf calls Canada Bread’s accusations “baseless.”
Dec. 20, 2023: Metro files new documents in the Ontario class action accusing Loblaw and its parent company George Weston of conspiring to implicate it in the alleged scheme, denying involvement. Sobeys has made a similar claim. The two companies deny the allegations.
July 25, 2024: Loblaw and George Weston say they agreed to pay a combined $500 million to settle both the Ontario and Quebec class-action lawsuits. Loblaw’s share of the settlement includes a $96-million credit for the gift cards it gave out years earlier.
Sept. 12, 2024: Canada Bread files new documents in Ontario court as part of the class action, claiming Maple Leaf used it as a “shield” to avoid liability in the alleged scheme. Maple Leaf was a majority shareholder of Canada Bread until 2014, and the company claims it’s liable for any price-fixing activity. Maple Leaf refutes the claims.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:L, TSX:MFI, TSX:MRU, TSX:EMP.A, TSX:WN)
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 250 points in late-morning trading, led by strength in the base metal and technology sectors, while U.S. stock markets also charged higher.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 254.62 points at 23,847.22.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 432.77 points at 41,935.87. The S&P 500 index was up 96.38 points at 5,714.64, while the Nasdaq composite was up 486.12 points at 18,059.42.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.68 cents US compared with 73.58 cents US on Thursday.
The November crude oil contract was up 89 cents at US$70.77 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was down a penny at US2.27 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$9.40 at US$2,608.00 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents at US$4.33 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Supervised injection sites are saving the lives of drug users everyday, but the same support is not being offered to people who inhale illicit drugs, the head of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS says.
Dr. Julio Montaner said the construction of Vancouver’s first indoor supervised site for people who inhale drugs comes as the percentage of people who die from smoking drugs continues to climb.
The location in the Downtown Eastside at the Hope to Health Research and Innovation Centre was unveiled Wednesday after construction was complete, and Montaner said people could start using the specialized rooms in a matter of weeks after final approvals from the city and federal government.
“If we don’t create mechanisms for these individuals to be able to use safely and engage with the medical system, and generate points of entry into the medical system, we will never be able to solve the problem,” he said.
“Now, I’m not here to tell you that we will fix it tomorrow, but denying it or ignoring it, or throw it under the bus, or under the carpet is no way to fix it, so we need to take proactive action.”
Nearly two-thirds of overdose deaths in British Columbia in 2023 came after smoking illicit drugs, yet only 40 per cent of supervised consumption sites in the province offer a safe place to smoke, often outdoors, in a tent.
The centre has been running a supervised injection site for years which sees more than a thousand people monthly and last month resuscitated five people who were overdosing.
The new facilities offer indoor, individual, negative-pressure rooms that allow fresh air to circulate and can clear out smoke in 30 to 60 seconds while users are monitored by trained nurses.
Advocates calling for more supervised inhalation sites have previously said the rules for setting up sites are overly complicated at a time when the province is facing an overdose crisis.
More than 15,000 people have died of overdoses since the public health emergency was declared in B.C. in April 2016.
Kate Salters, a senior researcher at the centre, said they worked with mechanical and chemical engineers to make sure the site is up to code and abidies by the highest standard of occupational health and safety.
“This is just another tool in our tool box to make sure that we’re offering life-saving services to those who are using drugs,” she said.
Montaner acknowledged the process to get the site up and running took “an inordinate amount of time,” but said the centre worked hard to follow all regulations.
“We feel that doing this right, with appropriate scientific background, in a medically supervised environment, etc, etc, allows us to derive the data that ultimately will be sufficiently convincing for not just our leaders, but also the leaders across the country and across the world, to embrace the strategies that we are trying to develop.” he said.
Montaner said building the facility was possible thanks to a single $4-million donation from a longtime supporter.
Construction finished with less than a week before the launch of the next provincial election campaign and within a year of the next federal election.
Montaner said he is concerned about “some of the things that have been said publicly by some of the political leaders in the province and in the country.”
“We want to bring awareness to the people that this is a serious undertaking. This is a very massive investment, and we need to protect it for the benefit of people who are unfortunately drug dependent.” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
