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Placing St. Lawrence Seaway staff picket exterior the St. Lambert Lock in St. Lambert, Quebec, Monday, Oct. 23, 2023.
Graham Hughes/AP
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Graham Hughes/AP
Placing St. Lawrence Seaway staff picket exterior the St. Lambert Lock in St. Lambert, Quebec, Monday, Oct. 23, 2023.
Graham Hughes/AP
MINNEAPOLIS — A deal was reached Sunday to finish a week-long strike that had shut down a serious transport artery within the Nice Lakes, halting the circulate of grain and different items from the U.S. and Canada.
Round 360 staff in Ontario and Quebec with Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union, walked out Oct. 22 in a dispute over wages with the St. Lawrence Seaway Administration Corp.
Seaway Administration stated ships will begin transferring once more when workers return to work at 7 a.m. Monday.
“We have now in hand an settlement that is honest for staff and secures a powerful and secure future for the Seaway,” CEO Terence Bowles stated in an announcement Sunday.
Unifor stated a vote to ratify the deal will probably be scheduled within the coming days.
“Particulars of the tentative settlement will first be shared with members and will probably be made public as soon as an settlement is ratified,” stated a union assertion.
The strike shut down 13 locks on the seaway between Lake Erie and Montreal, bottling up ships within the Nice Lakes and stopping extra ships from coming in.
The St. Lawrence Seaway and Nice Lakes are a part of a system of locks, canals, rivers and lakes that stretches greater than 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) from the Atlantic Ocean to the western tip of Lake Superior in Minnesota and Wisconsin. It carried over $12 billion (practically $17 billion Canadian) value of cargo final yr. Ships that journey it embody oceangoing “salties” and “lakers” that follow the lakes.
It is the primary time {that a} strike has shut down the important transport artery since 1968.
The Chamber of Marine Commerce estimated that the strike, which happened throughout one of many busiest occasions of the yr for the seaway, prompted the lack of as much as $100 million per day in financial exercise throughout Canada and the U.S.
“We’re happy that this interruption in important Seaway site visitors has come to an finish, and we are able to focus as soon as extra on assembly the wants of shoppers all over the world,” chamber president Bruce Burrows stated in an announcement Sunday.
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