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.

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'They want the $2 back': Metro must reinstate pandemic hero pay to end strike, says union Back to video

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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, boasted that the tentative deal had averted a strike at Metro. National president Lana Payne initially called the proposed contract “a milestone agreement” that would end up helping grocery workers around the country. But in a series of meetings in late July, Local 414 members voted to reject the deal and go on strike, a surprise twist that appears to becoming more common in Canadian labour relations of late. Last month, dock workers in British Columbia rejected a tentative agreement that would have averted a strike at the country’s busiest port.

Currie said one of the main complaints he heard in meetings with Metro employees was that the deal didn’t bring back the $2-per-hour wage increase in the first year.

“They made no bones about that. They want $2 in the first year,” he said. “(Metro) told us there’s no more money there. So we’re going to go back and look for more money obviously and try to get a deal.”

Metro spokesperson Marie-Claude Bacon said the company was offering wage increases well above inflation, as well as “improved pension and benefits, building on working conditions that are already among the highest in the industry.”

“We remain committed to the bargaining process,” Bacon said in an email.

In a news release, Payne said Unifor presented the tentative deal to Metro workers because it included “considerable” gains. “But our members are clear that it simply isn’t enough,” she said, adding that those members are struggling to afford basic expenses “at a time of record profits and soaring CEO compensation.”

Full-time employees at the 27 Metro stores in the Greater Toronto Area earn $22.60 an hour on average, while part-timers get an average of $16.62, according to Unifor.

Earlier this year, labour groups and industry observers criticized Metro for sweetening annual bonuses paid to its top five executives by nearly 14 per cent, at a time when grocery shoppers were facing the worst food inflation in roughly 40 years. Last year, La Flèche, the CEO, was paid $5.4 million in total compensation, up 6.8 per cent, ,

Canada’s top three grocery chains — Loblaw Cos. Ltd., Sobeys’ parent Empire Co. Ltd. and Metro — have been facing a wave of public scrutiny for increasing their profits during the inflation crisis. In June, a study by the Competition Bureau found the top grocers in Canada had increased their profit margins on food sales by a “modest yet meaningful amount” over the past five years. The bureau said the margin growth was a sign that there is “room for more competition” in the industry.

• Email: jedmiston@nationalpost.com | Twitter: jakeedmiston