About 100 dockworker union delegates from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand rallied outside DP World's Centerm container terminal at the Port of Vancouver on Sept. 23, launching an international campaign against automation and artificial intelligence that they say threatens jobs on the waterfront.

The march capped the International Dockworkers Anti-Automation Summit, held in late September at Vancouver's Maritime Labour Centre. Delegates adopted a shared platform that accepts technology aimed at improving safety and port communities but rejects its use to cut jobs, outsource work, expand surveillance, undermine unions or erode safety standards.

The timing matters for cargo interests. The current British Columbia longshore agreement expires in March 2027, and automation's impact on jobs, work rules and bargaining rights is expected to dominate those negotiations. Any labor disruption at Vancouver — Canada's largest Pacific container gateway — would ripple through Asian import supply chains feeding Canadian and U.S. inland markets by intermodal rail.

Tom Doran, president of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada, said the participating unions organized around what he characterized as a common threat from employers rolling out automation and AI. He singled out Dubai-based DP World, operator of the Centerm terminal, as the company at the center of longshore labor's concerns.

"Dock workers are united and determined to hold the line on destructive automation in our ports, no matter where those ports are," Doran said in the union's announcement.

DP World is also backing a major container project at the Port of Montreal and expansion at Port Saint John on Canada's east coast, extending the stakes of the dispute well beyond British Columbia.

A global coalition

The summit drew representatives from ILWU Canada and the U.S.-based International Longshore and Warehouse Union; the International Longshoremen's Association in the U.S. and Canada; the Maritime Union of Australia; the Maritime Union of New Zealand; New Zealand's Rail and Maritime Transport Union; Montreal's CUPE Local 375; the International Transport Workers' Federation; and the International Dockworkers Council.

The coalition demands that technological changes be negotiated before implementation. Its principles oppose automation used as a union-busting tool, new technology introduced without a "social dividend" for workers, technology-driven job cuts or reductions in wages and benefits, and automation that weakens safety protections or replaces secure waterfront work without negotiated safeguards.

Dennis Daggett, president of the ILA Atlantic Coast District and general coordinator of the International Dockworkers Council, said waterfront job losses reach beyond terminals, hitting businesses and communities that depend on port workers' incomes.

Centerm at the center

The rally targeted one of Vancouver's major container gateways and a critical link between Asian trade lanes and North American inland markets. DP World says its completed Centerm modernization lifted annual container-handling capacity from 900,000 to 1.5 million TEUs, adding rail capacity, electrifying equipment and enabling larger vessel calls. The terminal operates two berths, 15,000 feet of on-dock rail, 19 rubber-tired gantry cranes and five electrically powered semi-autonomous rail-mounted gantry cranes.

That capacity has grown in strategic importance. The Trump administration's tariff and trade policies have shifted containerized import traffic away from U.S. West Coast hubs toward Vancouver and Prince Rupert, also in British Columbia, for entry into the American market via intermodal rail.

Centerm has already produced one legal showdown. In 2024, ILWU Local 514, representing ship and dock forepersons, accused DP World of planning to introduce automation at Centerm's rail intermodal yard without first bargaining over the technological change. The dispute contributed to a strike notice directed at DP World before the Canada Industrial Relations Board ruled the union's strike vote unlawful and ordered the notice withdrawn.

The unions' core concern is that terminal technology can alter staffing, dispatching and job classifications even where it raises capacity or improves equipment performance. Employers counter that investment in digital systems, automated gates, rail operations and remote equipment increases throughput, improves safety and preserves the competitiveness of Canada's Pacific gateway.

Competing data

DP World and the B.C. Maritime Employers Association frame the Centerm upgrade as proof that modernization can expand both cargo capacity and waterfront employment. A KPMG report released Oct. 1 for the BCMEA said Centerm's capacity increased 65%, from 900,000 to 1.5 million TEUs, while waterfront payroll hours rose 59%, from 835,000 in 2019 to 1.328 million in 2025. The report credited combined investment in terminal infrastructure, technology, process improvements and workforce skills.

The unions insist they are not rejecting technology wholesale. Delegates said the benefits of automation must be shared with workers and communities, and any operational changes must pass through meaningful collective bargaining.

With the B.C. longshore contract expiring in March 2027 and an international coalition now aligned behind pre-implementation bargaining demands, automation terms at Centerm and Canada's other Pacific terminals look set to move to the center of the next round of West Coast labor negotiations.