Montreal Port Gets Five-Year Dockworker Deal Via Arbitration

By Tom Whitfield

Montreal's roughly 1,200 longshore workers have a new five-year contract, imposed by an arbitration tribunal and announced Friday by the Maritime Employers Association (MEA). The deal is retroactive to 2024 and runs through 2028. It covers Canada's second-largest container port, where industrial action has disrupted cargo flows since the previous agreement expired at the end of 2023.

Neither party has disclosed the contents. CUPE Local 375, which represents the workers, has issued no public statement. That silence matters. An imposed settlement that the union has not endorsed leaves open the question of shop-floor compliance for the life of the deal.

The tribunal acted under a Canada Industrial Relations Board decision, following the federal government's request to move negotiations to binding arbitration. Mediation under a federally appointed intermediary ran from late 2024 until talks collapsed in March 2025. Arbitration then took more than 18 months to produce this result.

"We are pleased with the implementation of this new collective agreement," MEA president Nicola Dolbec said in a statement. "After a period marked by uncertainty, this five-year agreement provides the stability needed to ensure the continued operations of the Port of Montreal and support the economic growth of the regions and industries it serves across the country. It will allow all stakeholders—customers, communities, employees and partners—to plan with confidence for the years ahead."

Stability is the promise. Whether five years of labour peace actually follows depends on terms nobody has published.

What does this change for shippers?

The dispute had a measurable cost. The MEA said in October 2024 that cargo handled by Montreal longshore workers had fallen 24 percent since 2022, largely to the benefit of U.S. East Coast ports, as shippers routed around the uncertainty.

The recovery has started. Montreal Port Authority (MPA) data updated Monday shows January-through-September volume at 1,208,701 TEUs, up 3 percent from the same period of 2025. Containerized tonnage rose 2.7 percent to 9.65 million metric tons. Inbound boxes drove the growth at 5.2 percent; outbound rose just 0.9 percent. This follows a 2.2 percent drop in containerized tonnage in 2025.

For apparel and soft-goods importers routing through eastern Canada, the arithmetic is straightforward. The contract removes the strike-and-lockout risk that pushed freight to U.S. ports for two years. It does not reverse it automatically.

The wage gap that arbitration closed

The bargaining positions were far apart. The union sought roughly 20 percent over four years, with core demands centred on scheduling, work rules and forced overtime rather than pay alone.

The MEA's final offer in early November 2024 proposed a cumulative wage increase of more than 20 percent over six years, taking average longshore compensation above 200,000 Canadian dollars per year. Members rejected it by 99.7 percent. The MEA locked out the workforce that month, and the federal government ended the lockout after two days.

Before that, CUPE Local 375 staged a three-day strike at the Viau and Maisonneuve terminals in late September 2024, followed by an indefinite overtime ban and a second strike. Those two terminals handle about 40 percent of the port's container traffic.

Capacity and the export-push backdrop

The settlement lands as Prime Minister Mark Carney makes doubling Canada's non-U.S. exports over the next decade the centrepiece of trade strategy. Montreal is the eastern gateway for that push.

The port is also mid-way through the largest expansion in its history. The Carney administration backed a 2.3-billion-Canadian-dollar ($1.7 billion) expansion that would lift container handling capacity by 60 percent when completed. Last September, the MPA and DP World agreed to expand facilities at the Contrecoeur Terminal, about 40 kilometres downriver. In-water work began in August; land-based construction starts next year; commissioning is expected by 2030.

The diversification strategy showed elsewhere last week. The MPA renewed its 2018 collaboration agreement with Adani Group, the Indian conglomerate operating several seaports including Mundra. India ranked as Montreal's second-largest market in 2025, with 1 million metric tons of goods exchanged.

The next fight: automation

Labour peace at Montreal does not end waterfront risk in Canada. Late last month, roughly 100 dockworker delegates from four countries rallied outside DP World's Centerm terminal at the Port of Vancouver, after an international anti-automation summit that included Montreal's own CUPE Local 375.

The British Columbia longshore contract comes up for renewal in March 2027. Automation will be the battleground. Shippers building multi-year routing plans around Canadian gateways should price that date now, not after the first picket line appears.

The Montreal deal buys five years of certainty at one port. It buys nothing at the others.