It Never Really Ended

If we are brutally honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge that slavery never really ended. To be sure, in the United States, Black people were released from official bondage with Emancipation, and countries today have no official slavery provisions. Nonetheless, it should be clear to all with critical faculties that the exploitation of our fellow humans has never ended. 

One of enslavement's contemporary forms is what we might call wage slavery, where workers who are responsible for some pretty hefty corporate profits are given, in their view, mere orts from the table for their labour. And one group is saying they want not crumbs. but an actual meal at the table.

As the strike by Metro grocery workers continued for a second day, experts said the job action is part of a larger trend of lower-wage earners pushing back against employers for better pay in industries that have in recent years seen massive gains in profits.

“This is the revenge of the wage earner,” David Macdonald, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told the Star on Sunday. “The first couple years of big increases in prices flowed into corporate profits, and workers were behind the 8-ball over that entire period.

Given record profits and soaring food costs, the workers' argument is hard to refute.

“This is the revenge of the wage earner,” David Macdonald, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told the Star on Sunday. “The first couple years of big increases in prices flowed into corporate profits, and workers were behind the 8-ball over that entire period.

In the second quarter of this year, Metro earned $218.8 million, a 10 per cent rise from the same period a year prior. Metro also saw its sales grow to $4.55 billion in the quarter, a 6.6 per cent rise year over year.

Such profits make it hard for companies to plead poverty, and with the common perception from the public that they are getting gouged each time they enter a grocery store, sympathy for the worker should be high. Indeed, the striking Metro workers are acting on behalf of the entire food industry.

Metro is the first major grocery retailer to negotiate with Unifor during this bargaining cycle, setting a benchmark for other upcoming negotiations.

Those negotiations, conducted by Unifor, will be coming at a furious pace, with Sobey's, No Frills and others imminent. 

Union leadership identified six core priorities for the upcoming cycle of negotiations, including significant pay improvements that reflect recent record-profits, greater access to health benefits, the elimination of pay disparities between workers, more full-time jobs and job protections for workers affected by tech change, among others.

Unless we live entirely selfish and blinkered lives, it is hard to imagine anyone, other than the corporate entities, taking exception to such expectations.