(Toronto) Metro announced Wednesday that it has reached a tentative agreement with the Unifor union for employees of 27 grocery stores in the Greater Toronto Area.
Details of the deal were not immediately available.
In a statement on Wednesday, Metro called the deal “fair and reasonable,” adding that it was unanimously recommended by the union’s bargaining committee and would end the labor dispute if was ratified.
The company said the deal would be put to an employee vote “soon”.
“This tentative agreement recognizes the economic hardship many of our members face,” Unifor Local 414 President Gord Currie said in a statement.
“I am very proud of these members and their determination. »
Employees went on strike on July 29, after rejecting an earlier tentative agreement the union had described as the best in decades.
During the weeks-long dispute, Metro workers launched secondary picket lines at two distribution centers, preventing stores from receiving fresh produce, a move for which the grocer obtained a temporary injunction.
Metro and Unifor returned to the bargaining table on Tuesday, a month after the strike began, the same day the injunction was granted to the retailer.
Since their last contract, the workers have lived through a global pandemic, runaway inflation and rising interest rates.
Metro employees are demanding higher wages, as well as better working conditions and more full-time jobs. Some workers said they struggled to pay for groceries in their own stores.
The union had said workers wanted a bigger share of Metro’s profits, which have grown over the past two years. Some workers have called for the pandemic “hero pay” — an extra $2 per hour — to be reinstated.
A recent Competition Bureau study found that the nation’s three largest grocers, including Metro, collectively made more than $100 billion in sales and $3.6 billion in profits last year.
This round of negotiations was the first for Unifor for the next two years, which should see negotiations with more than a dozen grocers. The union said it hoped the agreement with Metro would help set a precedent for future negotiations.
