With concerns growing over the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace, Unifor is demanding pandemic pay and priority vaccine access for those who work at grocery stores and warehouses.
"Grocery store workers, transit drivers, airline workers, school bus drivers," says Unifor National President Jerry Dias. "I can walk through the list of the essential workers that aren't paid anywhere near their worth. So if we're saying to these workers we need you to keep the economy going we should at least make sure that they go to work safe."
Dias says these employees are often left out of the "essential worker" conversation despite the fact groceries and the companies that transport them must remain open during the pandemic.
He says these workers deserve more respect.
"These are frontline workers that are in contact with hundreds of people each and every single day," he says. "So, number one, we need to move them to the front of the line, and number two, I am still completely mortified and disgusted at the management that has removed the pandemic pay."
Dias says staff in some stores have been told to overload on PPE, but aren't being properly compensated.
"In the the Greater Toronto Metro grocery stores our members, the employees, are told to wear three masks and a visor and these are employers that refuse to pay their employees pandemic pay," says Dias. "I just can't get my head around the absolute gull of some of these companies."
The company that runs Sobeys and FreshCo locally, Empire Company Ltd., has stepped up and reinstated pandemic pay for workers, but Dias says both Metro and Loblaws refuse to follow suit.
During the first wave of COVID-19, most major grocery chains provided 12 weeks of pandemic pay for employees which amounted to a $2/hour wage boost.
— with files from AM800's Patty Handysides