Potential strike looms at Metro stores in Toronto area

Canadian food and drug retailer Metro faces a looming deadline for a possible strike by more than 3,700 frontline workers at 27 stores in the greater Toronto area.

Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union, has set a strike deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday in the event that no contract agreement is reached. The union said late last week that Unifor Local 414 has made progress since negotiations kicked off June 26 but reported that “major wage, benefit and other monetary issues remain outstanding.”

The strike deadline came after Unifor Local 414, representing the Metro workers, on June 20 voted unanimously to authorize a strike against the grocer nearly a week before collective bargaining was scheduled to begin.

“Our negotiating committee is prepared to bargain all day and night to achieve a fair collective agreement,” Unifor National President Lana Payne said in a statement on Thursday. “Unifor members at Metro deserve a collective agreement that not only addresses the significant affordability challenges they face but that also fairly distributes the company’s record profits with those on the frontlines generating those profits.”

Montreal-based Metro couldn’t immediately be reached by Winsight Grocery Business for comment on the Unifor strike deadline.

In an email statement to CityNews Toronto on Thursday, Metro said of the strike deadline that it is “committed to working with the union to reach an agreement that meets the needs of our employees while enabling the company to have the flexibility it needs to meet and exceed our customer’s needs and expectations.”

Metro and Unifor Local 414 settled a strike by over 900 workers at the grocer's Etobicoke, Ontario, distribution center in April 2022. / Photo: Shutterstock

When the strike authorization vote was announced in June, Unifor Local 414 President Gord Currie said the union’s main priorities in contract talks would be fair pay for all workers and improved benefits with greater access, as well as more secure, stable working hours and full-time jobs.

“What were once some of the best, family-supporting jobs in Canada are now among the lowest paid in the country,” Currie commented at the time. “You know it’s bad when a grocery worker can’t afford the food they’re stocking on Metro’s shelves.”

And last week, Currie stated that the strike authorization by union members “sent a clear message to the company that if their priorities are not met, and wages and benefits do not improve, they are prepared to take strike action.”

Overall, Metro’s retail network in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick includes 975 food stores under the Metro, Metro Plus, Super C, Food Basics, Adonis, Marché Richelieu and Première Moisson banners, as well as 645 drugstores and pharmacies under the Jean Coutu, Brunet, Metro Pharmacy and Food Basics Pharmacy banners.

In early April 2022, Metro settled a nearly weeklong strike by over 900 full-time workers at its Etobicoke, Ontario, distribution center when Unifor Local 414 members ratified a new four-and-a-half-year contract. Warehouse employees represented by Unifor Local 414 had opted to strike after rejecting a tentative agreement between the union and Metro.

Unifor represents more than 11,000 frontline grocery store workers at Canada’s “big three” supermarket companies—Loblaw Cos., Sobeys Inc./Empire Co. Ltd. and Metro Inc.—across Ontario, Newfoundland, Labrador, Nova Scotia and Quebec. The union’s members work at such retail banners as Metro, Dominion, No Frills, Food Basics, Sobeys, Your Independent Grocer, Valu Mart and FreshCo, among others.

At the end of May, Unifor announced that the Metro grocery store worker contract talks would inaugurate a long stretch of collective bargaining with Loblaw, Sobeys and Metro. Over the next two years, the union expects to renew more than a dozen contracts with the three retailers.