Industry Committee on July 6th, 2020

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Dias, before I turn to the other witnesses, we heard from one of the witnesses about the number of employees who had fallen ill. Could you give us some numbers as well? We're all girding for the testimony we're going to be hearing from management on Friday. It would be very helpful if we had those numbers.

[Jerry Dias]

We had one of our members pass away who worked at a warehouse, but as we are sitting here today we have, I believe, 20 active COVID cases in the supermarkets and 15 in the warehouses.

Let me turn it over to Gord Currie.

[Gord Currie]

Yes, I can tell you the numbers as of yesterday. We're looking at about 8,000 members. This is just in Metro alone. We have 20 in the distribution centre and 18 in the stores. Now nine have returned to work in the distribution centre and six in the stores. We did have one death in the warehouse.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you.

Now, if I could put the same question to Mr. Lacroix, how many employees have fallen ill?

[Stéphane Lacroix]

I don't have that information at the moment.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Meinema, would you comment?

[Paul Meinema]

We've been as high as 60 active cases throughout Canada. We've had four deaths in the retail sector. We've had two deaths in the meat-processing sector, and well over 3,000 people impacted at one point or another in food processing.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Meinema, my follow-up question is to you. You said this is an issue you're bringing up at the bargaining table. Given the problematic living wages that a lot of employees are receiving, what is the standard response that management gives you when you raise these types of legitimate concerns?

I just want to be prepared for Friday.

[Paul Meinema]

The thing that they will always bring up is who their competition is and what their competition pays.

Our argument back is that we believe the system is actually flawed. The logistical system of retailing groceries is flawed when we are more concerned about driving lower costs, which impact the Teamsters with the trucking, and which impact Unifor, Teamsters and UFCW with warehousing, because we end up with warehouses that are fully automated. The system itself has very thin margins, but I believe that the very thin margins are because the design of the system itself is to make sure that we keep thin margins.

That's where I think the government has to play a huge role in a living wage, so that if the real argument is competition, then take the non-union competition and force them into the same situation when it comes to wages and benefits. Union members will receive more benefits overall. They'll receive a pension overall, but those are all parts of it. The thin margins that the retailers always talk about, I think, are a flaw in the system because that's what we're driving things to rather than looking at increasing and improving the lot of life for workers.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Paul.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much. Unfortunately, that's all your time, Mr. Ehsassi.

Mr. Savard-Tremblay, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Good afternoon.

My question is for Mr. Lacroix. It will actually be two complementary questions in one.

First, it can be said that, in the last 20 years, the industry giants have not provided quality working conditions for their employees, since salaries have not kept up. Despite the fight by the unions, it can be said that it is still difficult to obtain better working conditions. What advantages would there be in imposing a government order?

Second, I would like to deal with the matter of a potential pay raise. Let's assume that the pay raise of $2 an hour for grocery store workers was made mandatory. I don't want to presuppose any motives, but we can assume that the companies will say that they can do it, but that the bill will be passed on to the customers. That's the classic argument. I would also like to hear what you have to say about that.

[Stéphane Lacroix]

It is certainly a classic argument. We don't know anymore how to come at the problem of the conditions for workers in this industry. Thank you for your questions. I will answer the first one first.

One of the advantages of an order is that it allows companies to compete on a level playing field. It means that no companies are paying very high wages while others are paying very low wages. Everyone provides wages and working conditions that are basically similar. Government orders work. In Quebec, orders have been put in place for certain industries, and they did not automatically inflate prices for consumers.

For example, an order governs the garbage industry around Quebec City and it has not inflated the municipal tax bills of the homeowners in the region. It's a kind of urban myth that companies use to try and get out of having to pay and treat their workers correctly.

This is 2020 and people are paid $15 an hour. Frankly, I think we have to move on to the next step.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Lacroix, I am with you entirely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lacroix and Mr. Savard-Tremblay.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Masse. You have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

A report from CTV has two grocery store workers in Windsor testing positive for COVID-19. That was public today. They are from the Real Canadian Superstore on Walker Road and the Dougall Avenue location as well. If anyone has said that the pandemic and the price of work have lessened, it's not true. We all know a second wave is coming.

For my question, I'll start with the Teamsters and allow them to get it. I have only about a minute and a half after I finish, so perhaps we can be as quick as possible.

Would more full-time positions in this industry also lessen the risk for the public and the workers, if there was more permanency and routine to those positions? I'm a PSW by training. Many PSWs have to work two or three different jobs. You have heightened exposure, and the risk to the people you're serving is heightened because you have to go from place to place.

My question, starting with the Teamsters, then UFCW and finally Unifor, is this: Would a greater stability of full-time jobs improve safety not only for the workers there, but also for the general public?

[Paul Meinema]

I can begin.

On the sheer mathematics of it, Mr. Masse, absolutely. If you have five people or three people coming in to do part-time work, and one full-time person could do that job, clearly that would be fewer points of contact, so there's no doubt that just on the simple math, it would be better.

On top of that, those part-time workers wouldn't go to another employer or another retailer to work, so they would have less contact because they would have one full-time job. As we all know, full-time employment, with a proper living wage, would keep these folks in better shape all around.

To your earlier point, Mr. Masse, on the food deserts and the inadequate stores and these types of issues, a national food policy will get us there, but full-time jobs will make a big difference.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Okay.

[Jerry Dias]

Let's move over to Carolyn Wrice.

[Carolyn Wrice, President, Local 597, Unifor]

Yes, for sure. I represent retail workers here in Newfoundland. People are struggling from paycheque to paycheque. If they had full-time jobs, full-time wages, definitely it would be a lot safer for everybody. We have people here in our stores who are going from store to store trying to get 40 hours a week. It's not a good way to live. We have some of our workers going to food banks. It's not good here.

Of course, we live on an island. We have just joined the Atlantic bubble. There are people coming in to our province. We don't really know what they're bringing in to us, and they're—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Unfortunately, Madam Wrice, that's all the time we have for that round.

[Carolyn Wrice]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

I'll have to move now to MP Patzer.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My first questions will go to Mr. Meinema.

Earlier you had mentioned the thin margins that some of the stores are reporting, and the need for systemic change. As an example, my riding here is 77,000 square kilometres in size. I have something like 140 different communities within the riding. They're all very small towns. A lot of these individual small towns have their own grocery stores. The margins are so thin that if there were a mandated minimum wage increase from, let's say, where we are now to $15 an hour, I've had most of those store owners tell me that they would have to fire all their employees and work longer and more hours themselves, as the store owners, because they literally could not afford it.

How do we address that issue and that concern going forward?

[Paul Meinema]

I think that question always comes up when we talk about either the minimum wage or raises through a collective agreement. I think there's a bit of fallacy in that situation. We hear it from small retailers and we hear it from large retailers, each time, that if minimum wages go up anywhere in the country, they're going to close the doors and they're going to lay off people. That actually doesn't occur. What does become factual is that people have more money to spend inside their communities, and that will generate more income and more jobs.

Again, I believe it's a flaw in the system that we need to keep margins so tight that it does not allow proper compensation to be provided to the people doing the jobs, but when we have a pandemic, they were able to [Technical difficulty—Editor]. We don't see stores closing and we don't see people going out of business as a result of this portion of it. I do realize that the pandemic has hurt people in other areas, but I'm talking about food retailers. There is research out there that says people are saying, “Look, if I knew that the grocery store person I see every week could get a decent wage and some pension and some benefits if I had to pay a couple cents more on a can of tuna or for my carrots, then I would happily pay it.”

A number of things will provide better and more stability. You can talk about some of the things in the small communities that you're talking about. As Carolyn Wrice said, very clearly, we have some people, some workers in these stores, who are using food banks. We have to accept that there's a flaw in this system. We could provide a far better situation for the workers who are in there and for those small communities, because there would be more money for them to spend at other locations as well.