A Metro grocery store in North York closed its doors this week and while the location will reopen as a Food Basics in the fall, a union representing workers says that many employees will be left without full-time jobs. The store is located at 20 Church Ave., which is near Yonge Street and Finch Avenue. It shut down on Wednesday and is expected to reopen as a new Food Basics store by October, a spokesperson for Metro confirmed. “We regularly and carefully assess our network based on local market conditions, and in this case, a Food Basics store is better suited to meet customer needs in the area,” Stephanie Bonk, a communications manager for Metro, said in an email to CTV News. Metro says they provided staff with options available to them under their existing collective agreement, adding that they have been working directly with union representatives. However, a union representative tells CTV News that employees were “pretty shocked” by the decision to convert the store and many were unable to secure full time hours at the new Food Basics location. “They didn’t really expect it,” Corey Nilsson, local staff representative for Unifor Local 414, said in an interview. The union represents more than 10,000 members who work in the retail sector, spanning across the province. Nilsson says there were about 60 part-time and full-time workers at the North York location and they were all notified of the store’s conversion in May. “It’s very disheartening for people losing their jobs,” Nilsson said. “It might not be the immediate people in the stores but there are people that are affected going down to part time, which affects their wages, their hours, their benefit entitlements, and everything.” Metro says that “some employees will be employed at the new Food Basics store, while others may choose different options available under the collective agreement.” Full-time staff had three days to decide on what their next steps would be, Nilsson said, while part-timers had a bit more time to weigh out their options. He adds that about eight employees ultimately chose to stay at Food Basics, meaning they saw a pay decrease. The highest decrease is $1.40 per hour less, Nilsson says, though it depends on years of service. “Their bumping process (for part-time staff) is a little different, they don’t bump anyone,” Nilsson said. “No part-timer lost their job as a result, it’s the full-timers that may have went part-time.” The last time this happened at a Metro in the Toronto-area was in 2013, according to Nilsson. Another Metro is being converted in Ottawa Metro confirmed they have also converted another one of their locations into a Food Basics in Ottawa. The South Keys Metro location, located at 2515 Bank St., will turn into a Food Basics this September. There were 72 employees affected by the change, according to United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 175. “In response to the closure of South Keys Metro, UFCW Local 175 took immediate action to advocate for affected workers, negotiating enhanced options including severance packages and priority hiring provisions at the new Food Basics store,” UFCW Local 175 President Kelly Tosato said in a statement. “Union representatives have worked directly with members to ensure they understand their rights and have access to every available resource.” Did you work at a Metro location that is being converted into a Food Basics? How has the change impacted you? Share your story by emailing us at torontonews@bellmedia.ca with your name, general location and phone number in case we want to follow up. Your comments may be used in a future story.
