Metro grocery chain employees on strike amid fruit, vegetable shortage in Quebec

Employees of Metro’s warehouse and headquarters continued their strike Monday, demanding better wages as fruit and vegetable shortages hit grocery store shelves in Montreal.

More than 550 workers at Metro Laval distribution centre, the company’s headquarters and the Mérite warehouse in Rivière-des-Prairies took to the picket lines after voting to reject the grocery giant’s salary increase proposals.

The union claims the company offered them an 11 per cent raise over six years, including one per cent annual raises for those in the lower salary grades.

“Their mortgage has tripled. Their rents? Doubled. Their grocery bills from this exact company exploded by 30 per cent,” said Frédéric Gervais, a member of the negotiating table at Metro-Richelieu-CSN United Grocery Workers’ Union.

Union leaders say wages haven’t kept up with inflation, rising just over two per cent a year under the last deal at the start of the pandemic.

“The world in which we live in, 2.25 per cent is not a way to be able to sustain a family,” Gervais said.

“We’re striking to get back the cost of living losses that we’ve had over the last five years.”

Workers are demanding a 20 per cent increase next year, including 12 per cent to make up for what they say were low wages in the past.

Metro’s annual reports show that profits are up more than 40 per cent since 2019 – a rate faster than the growth of their sales.

“In French, they told us that the ‘ballon a besoin de se dégonfler.’ In other words, ‘the balloon’s too big, we’re not moving off our offer.’ The next day, we decided to go on strike,” Gervais recounted.

Workers are also demanding better working conditions and an end to the outsourcing of drivers.

Metro says the strike came before negotiations were finished, telling CityNews: “The union nevertheless called a strike last Monday morning, even though the parties had agreed the day before to continue negotiations, including on monetary issues.”

But union leaders explain they had an unlimited strike mandate that was approved almost a month prior, allowing them to act at any time.

The workers say they’re prepared to stay on the picket lines until they get a better deal.

“On the first day of the strike, the employer brought six Voyager buses full of scab workers,” said Gervais.

The union says no trucks are being allowed into the warehouse. Meanwhile the distribution centre supplies fruit and vegetable to some 1,000 Metro group stores like Metro and Super C throughout Quebec, and experts say the grocery giant’s stock of fruits and veggies is sure to be affected in the coming days.

The cost of the strike will likely to be passed off to the consumer, one food expert believes.

“The distribution centre exists for a reason,” said Sylvain Charlebois, the director of the Dalhousie University Agri-Food Analytics Lab. “It’s to optimize supply chains. If that doesn’t exist, then it slows things down and costs increase.

“The demand for produce is being shifted over to competitors right now. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.”

Metro shoppers in Laval were already noticing a clear shortage of fruits and veggies on Monday.

“Today right now it looks like it’s kind of empty in some places,” one shopper told CityNews.

“A lot is missing, bananas and what have you. There’s really a minimum,” added another.

Charlebois believes that as distribution becomes scarce, Metro will have to skirt around the distribution centre, delivering produce to its stores directly.

“Metro has no choice,” he said. “It has to really support its stores. And the produce section is a very, very lucrative section.”

The food expert also says the strike reflects a broader wave of labour disputes driven by wages and automation.

“Unions tend not to like that because being replaced by robots is not necessarily an appeal, I think, for a membership.”