'They want the $2 back': Metro must reinstate pandemic hero pay to end strike, says union
The union representing 3,700 employees at Metro Inc. says the grocery chain needs to immediately reinstate the $2 hourly wage increase that grocery workers received during the pandemic if it wants to end a strike that has shut down 27 supermarkets in and around Toronto for four days.
Gord Currie, president of Unifor Local 414, said his members voted to reject the deal in part because it didn’t bump their wages back up to what they were making in the pandemic.
“They want the two dollars back,” he said.
Metro and its main rivals in the grocery business cut their so-called “hero pay” bonuses for front-line workers on the same day in June 2020 — a controversy that pushed the federal government to strengthen its laws against wage-fixing. At a parliamentary hearing into the scandal, Metro chief executive Eric La Flèche said he called executives at competing chains trying to get information about when they planned on cutting the bonuses.
Three years later, Metro employees at Local 414 were back at the bargaining table to negotiate a new contract. In mid-July, the bargaining committee and management agreed on a tentative deal that would have boosted full-time wages by $3.75 an hour for the most senior full-time employees over four years — with a $1.05 per hour bump in the first year, followed by 90 cents in each of the three following years, according to Currie. Part-time employees, who make up more than 70 per cent of the roughly 3,700 workers on strike, would have seen a maximum increase of $2.75 over four years, Currie said, adding the proposed increases were “the best we’ve had in 25 years.”
On July 19, Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union that also represents employees at the Financial Post’s Toronto newsroom,
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