When someone says, that some days it seems like it’s hardly worth going in to work anymore they might be on to something.
The Overwaitea Food Group, part of the Jim Pattison Empire has apparently introduced a shocking demand into the debut of contract negotiations with their union the UFCW. A negotiating demand that makes you wonder whatever happened to the Canadian ideal of a full time job.
In the opening days of the quest for a new collective agreement to replace the one coming to an end in March, the grocery chain has come up with a bid to introduce a work day consisting of but two hours. As it is, grocery stores already have some of the least amount of hours available for staff in the working world, with a four hour work day provision the standard for many in the current agreement, but that it seems might be just a little too much in the way of hours for management.
Why our wonderful liberal government changed it to 2 hours as one of their first tasks when they got in IIRC. That along with many other wonderful changes to our labor standards act that are of course very beneficial to the employee.
When the UFCW allowed the big chains to gut their agreements in the grocery stores many years ago now, they started down a slipery slope.
Jobs that used to pay a decent wage now pay little more than the provincial minimum.
My heart goes out to the workers there they are caught between a tyrant employer and a union that won’t stand up for them.
The work day for casuals working for CUPE in Rupert is only 2 hours…
I doubt that any full time employees who have built up seniority will be affected by this at all… I’m assuming this is a way for management at Overwaitea locations to better deal with students and other people who might tend to be unavailable for longer, 4-8 hour shifts.
It’s not like suddenly everyone is only going to be scheduled for 2 hours a day…
No but in bigger cities they will be called in for 2 hours to work. Do the math its 2.00 for the bus round trip thats 4.00 they make ~17 for 2 hrs work automatically knock that down to 13.00 imagine the unfortunate soul has kids well day care will knock that down by say 10 bucks for the neighbors kid to come over and watch tv for a couple hours, now you’re down to 3.00, add in taxes and you made hwat 50 cents?
Worthwhile!
Yeah they can find other jobs but sometimes its not that easy, throw kids in the mix you need a flexible schedule good luck finding something that pays more than minimum wage if you dont have a college education/ability to do labor work.
There may be a “labor shortage” its not for lack of people to work though its due to the lack of people willing to work for the pittance being offered. At least here anyway.
The two-tier agreements were the shame of the union movement. Now there is a movement from out of Quebec to abolish them, complete with Charter filings.
And at the same time the ass-backwards UAW has agreed to one down South…
Just out of curiosity, what is the rate of pay for the CUPE folks that may only be working 2 hours a day? Pretty sure it’s probably a tad more rewarding than 8.50 or whatever the new hire rate that was introduced a few years back is.
Considering the next wave of technology in the grocery stores is the self scanning check out already in use in some stores in the USA, I’m sure that until there’s actually no need for employees anymore, that management will always be trotting out these ice breakers for negotiating purposes.
Maybe if they could get all the employees to work for 2c and hour and no benefits, they wouldn’t ding me $3.99 for a dozen hot dog buns that taste like they’re 2 weeks old?
Or charge as much for noname cheese as they do for shrimp?
When I brought up this news item to my husband the other day, he told me that the casual CUPE employees that work the really short call-out shifts of two hours for his department are getting anywhere from $11.50 to somewhere over $20/hour,depending on the job…I know the bucks would be higher up in Prince Rupert. Not too bad at the higher end for someone who is semi-retired or a high school kid looking to get their foot in the door somewhere but I don’t think it encourages someone looking for some kind of living to even darken the door with a resume.
You get what you pay for and for less than $20 bucks a day, it ain’t going to be much, is it??
How many Overwietea employees have the training to work a city job? A buddy of mine who works casually at the pool had to take $2200 worth of courses before he was eligible for hire. What people at Overwaitea that will be asked to work 2 hour days can say that?
So I guess we’ll mark you down as in favour of two hour a day workweeks.
I hope your buddy is getting more than two hours a day of work however, cause with a 2200 dollar investment before the first paycheck, it’s going to take an awful long period of time to recoup that investment…
$2200 is fuck all thats only about 1/4 my fun budget for the year. For an education thats a pittance. My education cost about $40, 000 which was paid out of my pocket before my first paycheck.
Okay… maybe I’m understanding this all wrong… but. To me it seemed that it was simply allowing for a 2 hour work day—that doesn’t mean that the ONLY work day they’ll have is 2 hours. Cmon… you can’t actually argue that suddenly all the employees are gonna be working 2 hours a day.
This is simply a way for Overwaitea not to have to pay someone with crappy flexibility a full shift (was if 4 hours before?) for only working 2 hours. Full time employees will still get 40 hours a week–that’s how labour law defines full time work.
That’s exactly my point… How much training does it take for a student, or someone else with no post-secondary education, to stock shelves and work the till?