Sobeys parent reports profit boost as B.C. workers vote to strike over 'insulting' offer
Workers at about 40 Safeway and FreshCo supermarkets in British Columbia are willing to walk off the job, according to a nearly unanimous strike authorization vote that union leaders say should be a wake-up call to the grocery chains’ parent company, Empire Co. Ltd., to stop making “insulting” wage offers at the bargaining table.
United Food and Commercial Workers Canada (UFCW), which represents about 2,500 workers at 40 Safeway locations and FreshCo pharmacies in B.C., asked members to authorize a strike earlier this week, hoping the threat of a strike would pressure Empire into offering a better deal.
After three days of voting, UFCW on Sept. 14 announced members voted 98 per cent in favour of strike authorization. That means union leaders have the ability call a strike, but UFCW said they plan to keep bargaining.
The vote ended on the same day that Empire, Canada’s second-largest grocer, reported better-than-expected sales and profit growth in the first quarter.
“Our members deserve to share in the success,” Kim Novak, president UCFW Local 1518, said in a news release on Sept. 15 that referenced Empire’s earnings performance.
The dispute is the latest in a wave of unrest among grocery workers in Canada. Earlier this summer, roughly 3,700 workers at Empire’s rival Metro Inc. walked off the job for more than a month, demanding the company increase wages by $2 per hour in the first year of any deal to make up for the removal of so-called “Hero Pay” bonuses that employees received early in the pandemic.
After a bitter standoff that included union picketers blocking trucks from Metro’s Toronto warehouses, both sides agreed on a deal that delivered a $4.50 hourly wage increase for full-time workers over four years. Unifor, the union that negotiated the deal, predicted it would have “a ripple effect across the entire sector.”
Novak said Empire was offering wage increases of no more than one per cent per year over the course of a five-year deal, with no increases in some of those years. She said the bargaining team wants to repeat the gains it made in a July agreement with Western Canadian grocer Save-On-Foods, which gives increases of 12 per cent over the course of the deal — the biggest raise the union said it’s negotiated in more than 20 years.
“The wage offer made by Sobeys is simply insulting to our members — and is forcing our hand,” Novak said in the statement. “The company does not appear to understand what the staff are up against in their day-to-day (lives).”
UFCW members voting in favour of a strike does not automatically trigger a walkout at the stores. Instead, it will authorize the bargaining committee to call a strike if needed.