St. Lawrence Seaway workers join the strike wave

Shipping traffic at a key Canadian transportation artery has ground to a halt. No, there isn’t a 400-metre-long container ship blocking the Seaway, just 361 workers walking off the job.

Driving the news: Unionized workers at the St. Lawrence Seaway, a 3,700-kilometer route that connects the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, have been on strike as of Sunday, forcing 15 locks along the waterway to close operations, per The Globe and Mail.

Why it matters: The Seaway is crucial for the Great Lakes region, a grouping of provinces and states that collectively accounts for nearly a third of US and Canadian economic activity and employment. Millions of tonnes of key resources are also transported each year.

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Big picture: As workers fight for higher wages in the face of high inflation, strikes in Canada and the US have hit shipping ports, grocery chains, automobile plants, and movie studios.

• In Canada, the first eight months of 2023 saw 2.1 million working days lost to strikes, about double the time lost to strikes pre-pandemic.

Bottom line: With business groups already calling on Ottawa to step in — and the financial hit that Canada’s exports took from the 13-day BC port strike still fresh in memory — the feds might not be on the sidelines for long.

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