Go on, have a drink! If you are a serious drunk, there is always a reason to have another. (I speak here from the experience of my own floridly misspent youth.) If you are happy, drink to celebrate. If you are sad, drink for comfort. If neither, have a drink anyway. Thus, the heart-breaking, poisonous, fundamentally stupid logic of addiction.
But there are many different kinds of addiction. The ruling class, for example, has long been addicted to a few tired old policy demands that they trot out with tiresome regularity, whatever the current situation. These demands include lower taxes on the rich and their corporations, reductions in government regulation and services and a key proposal- union busting (aka “labour peace,”) to weaken the working class’s self organization and self-defence. These endlessly elaborated policy demands reflect neither original thought nor wholeness of heart.
And like the drunkard’s next drink, these policies may bring short term pleasures for employers, like increased profits, lax regulations and a government shrunk to only provide pro business interventions, but the long term consequences are dire for workers. They lead to a ravaged environment, a coarsened society brutally stripped of solidarity, alienation on steroids, pathological consumerism and profound human loneliness.
Another example of this dreary knee jerk policy reflex from the ruling class and its apologists was on offer the other day in the Vancouver Sun, always a reliable showcase for ruling class views. (Full disclosure: I published in the Sun frequently over the decades, mainly book reviews.) On August 24 the head of the Vancouver Board of Trade, Bridgitte Anderson, published an op-ed entitled: “Canada’s trade diversification depends on labour stability at B.C. ports.”
Anderson is a competent writer and can clearly call on extensive work by her organization’s researchers to support her arguments. She is publishing in a high profile daily paper likely to expose hundreds of thousands of viewers to her opinions, so it is worth our while to consider what she has to say, and how it might fit into the larger context of the class war long conducted in Canada and around the world by our “economic masters.”
Anderson argues that “The breakdown of trade negotiations with the U.S. marks a watershed moment, underscoring a reality that Canadians from coast to coast have increasingly come to recognize: Canada cannot afford to depend so heavily on a single export market.”
She points out that the port of Vancouver is crucial to Canadian trade, especially if that trade is to expand to other non-US markets in response to Trump’s manic trade war initiatives. She applauds the recently announced federal Port of Vancouver Gateway Strategy with its promise of expanded infrastructure at the port, but rather ominously and tellingly refers to the workers who actually move cargo as infrastructure as well. She clearly sees labour disputes on the docks as an infrastructure failure to be corrected and minimized, not as the self activity of working people trying to protect their jobs and improve their share of the economic pie.
She notes that “The Port of Vancouver handled a record 170.4 million metric tonnes of cargo in 2025, an eight per cent increase over 2024.” Anderson also claims that her organization’s “port shutdown calculator” found that labour-related disruptions at west coast ports impacted approximately $19.2 billion in cargo in 2025, an eight per cent increase over 2024.
With negotiations for a new contract between the B.C. Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) and International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Canada scheduled to begin this fall, Anderson argues that “labour peace” is vital. She suggests that the key to “labour peace” at the ports is to be found in a study co-authored by BC’s iconic labour mediator Vince Ready and published in 2025.
Ready and his colleagues summarized their recommendations thus:
- Recommendation 1: That the right to strike/lockout be preserved for the longshoring industry in Canada.
- Recommendation 2: That the Canada Labour Code be amended to include special mediator provisions as detailed in this report.
- Recommendation 3: A British Columbia-wide geographic certification (excluding Westshore Terminals and Trigon Pacific Terminals) is the most appropriate bargaining unit for longshore workers.
- Recommendation 4: An appropriate framework for collective bargaining in accordance with the broad certification recommended in this report needs to be established.
- Recommendation 5: The parties to the geographic certification should be a council of trade unions comprised of the ILWU Canada longshoring locals with members working for BCMEA members and Local 514.
- Recommendation 6: The government enact legislative changes or new legislation required for a geographic certification.
- Recommendation 7: No changes to the internal governance or decision-making processes of the parties.
While some of the recommendations may seem sensible and worth consideration, what they will not address is the simple fact that the Board of Trade and the Employer associations on the docks, like other organs of the business class, have a long history of conducting class war against employees.
Calls from these aggressors for “labour peace” amount to a call for unilateral surrender. Anderson’s reference to workers on the docks as “infrastructure” is particularly chilling. Workers have fought for a long time to be recognized and respected as human beings, not part of someone’s impersonal “infrastructure.” Until we find a way to dismantle capitalism, the war will continue, and workers will be well advised to view any calls for “labour peace” with justified suspicion.
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