'I feel like crying': Metro workers accept deal to end month-long strike

financialpost.com:

Grocery workers on strike from more than two dozen Metro Inc. supermarkets in the Toronto area have accepted a tentative agreement that ends a month-long labour dispute that shut down stores and temporarily blocked deliveries of meat and produce around the province.

The new deal offered an extra 75 cents per hour to full-timers, and 55 cents to part-timers, compared to Metro’s previous offer, though the wage increases are now stretched over five years instead of four. Workers ratified the deal in a vote at a Toronto convention centre on Aug. 31, said Paul Whyte, a spokesperson with Unifor, the union representing the workers.

“This past month has been tough on the picket lines, has been tough for you and your families, but you have shown workers across the country the power of a union,” Unifor national president Lana Payne said in a handout to members at the convention centre.

Members questioned the bargaining committee in the centre for roughly 90 minutes, then mingled outside, some waiting for school buses organized by the local. As people streamed out of the hall, many loudly criticized the deal.

“We just spent five weeks on the picket line for that? Oh my God,” Colleen Scott, a meat wrapper at a Metro store in Newmarket, Ont., said outside after casting her vote. “I feel like crying. It’s the biggest insult.”

But others said they had no choice but to accept the offer since they cannot afford to live on the union’s strike pay of $300 per week. As a man headed into the parking lot, Scott asked him if he had rejected the deal.

“No,” he said. “I have a house. I have a kid. I have to support my family.”

Roughly 3,700 employees with Unifor Local 414 rejected Metro’s previous deal in July, opting for a strike at 27 stores in