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- canadalabour
Front-line grocery store workers at Metro, who are into their third day of a work stoppage, vowed on Monday to stay off the job until they get a fair deal from the company.
More than 3,000 store workers at 27 Metro locations in the Greater Toronto Area began strike action on Saturday after rejecting a tentative collective agreement reached last week between the company and their union — Unifor.
“We want the company to come back and give us a fair deal,” Tammy Laporte told CBC News outside Metro Danforth.
“We’re on strike because we want fairness from our company. We want Metro to pay their workers what they’re worth and we’ll stand out here as long as it takes.”
Unifor Local 414 represents some 3,700 grocery store workers across the GTA.
Unifor said stores affected by the strike include those in Toronto, Brantford, Orangeville, Milton, Oakville, Brampton, North York, Islington, Willowdale, Mississauga, Etobicoke, Newmarket and Scarborough.
Laporte, a produce and fruit clerk, who has worked with Metro for 25 years, said “wages is the top issue” for the workers.
“We want more money. They make great profits and we want to share in the benefits,” she said.
Another worker with the company for 25 years, Mike Labatt, said workers are “fighting for what they believe in and what they need to get by.”
He said some workers are forced to go to food banks because they cannot afford to buy groceries.
“We’re not being able to buy the food we want from the grocery stores we work in, right? So why not give us what we need so we can survive paying rent, paying our bills, groceries,” Labatt said.
Metro says it remains committed to bargaining process In a statement on Monday, Metro Inc. said it remains committed to the bargaining process.
Marie-Claude Bacon, Metro’s vice president of public affairs and communications, said the company “worked constructively with the union and the employees’ bargaining committee” and reached a mutually satisfactory agreement that they unanimously recommended to employees.
“It provided significant increases for our employees over the four years of the collective agreement in addition to improved pension and benefits, building on working conditions that are already among the highest in the industry which were negotiated with this union,” Bacon wrote in the statement.
According to Bacon, the proposed wage increases are above the inflation rate for 2023 and future increases are above the projected inflation rate.
“Every part-time employee who wants a full-time position has opportunities. For example, in the last two years alone, we’ve opened up a number of full-time positions and we haven’t been able to fill them all from our part-time ranks. Even today, we have full-time positions posted that part-time employees can apply for,” Bacon said.
On Saturday the company said it was “extremely disappointed” the employees rejected the agreement even though the union bargaining committee unanimously recommended it to its members.
Metro Ontario said the 27 stores will be closed for the duration of the strike, but pharmacies will remain open.
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Laporte, a produce and fruit clerk, who has worked with Metro for 25 years, said “wages is the top issue” for the workers. “We want more money. They make great profits and we want to share in the benefits,” she said.
The fact that someone can make a career out of being a produce and fruit clerk at Metro is pretty amazing, TBH.
Yeah that kind of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? Imaging building a career as a grocery clerk in a non-unionized environment. No way that could ever happen! I mean the fact that someone with basically a high school education can have a stable job for decades is… something.
I was thinking more of the fact that these are basically minimum wage jobs. That someone would want work for decades in a minimum wage job is pretty wild.
Are there no opportunities for growth in the company or what?
There are always fewer management positions than worker positions. The idea that everyone needs to move up simply isn’t realistic.
Also, why should he need promotions to get raises? People at the bottom still deserve to own houses and raise families and save for retirement.
There are always fewer management positions than worker positions. The idea that everyone needs to move up simply isn’t realistic.
It’s been a while (like many, many decades) since I’ve worked in a grocery store, but the turnover for management was always pretty fast and the next in line were always other workers who had seniority.
I’d be surprised if managers stick it out for decades, but maybe that’s the case.
Also, why should he need promotions to get raises? People at the bottom still deserve to own houses and raise families and save for retirement.
I don’t think they should be paid slave wages, but I also don’t think it would be realistic to that an entry-level position could ever be enough to afford to buy a house and raise a family.
They’d need to be paid a minimum of $40/h to even dream about doing all that on a single income.
What’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t they get what they needs to buy a home?
It’s unrealistic to think that an entry level job could pay for a house.
I’m not saying it’s right or fair, but there’s no way someone could get paid enough to afford a house working as a produce clerk.
They’d need to get 4-5x times the pay, and that’s just not going to happen.
You’re thinking about this backwards. Instead of looking at a clerk and saying it’s unrealistic for them to own a home, look at their boss and ask why they aren’t being paid better. Look at the government and ask why they’re not doing anything serious about housing.
Stop saying what is and start demanding what should be.
That’s how society improves.
