Unifor says workers at Walmart warehouse in Mississauga, Ont., vote to join union

Walmart workers at a Mississauga, Ont., warehouse have cleared a key hurdle in their fight to become the retailer's first unionized depot in Canada.

Unifor, Canada's largest private sector union, announced Friday (Sept. 13) that a majority of the 800 workers at the site west of Toronto had voted in favour of unionization earlier in the week.

The vote must still be certified by the Ontario Labour Relations Board before the workers can elect a bargaining committee and seek a collective agreement. 

Walmart Canada is reviewing its next steps, company spokesperson Stephanie Fusco said in an email.

The retail giant has the ability to fight the certification, a move Unifor's president was expecting.

"They employ a lot of lawyers, so I'm sure they're all thinking about what it is they can do here right now because this is a pretty big win," Lana Payne said in an interview.

She and Unifor have spent much of their time focused recently on the retail sector, where the number of warehouse workers and couriers has steadily climbed with the growth of e-commerce and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many of these employees have long bemoaned challenging working conditions, a lack of benefits and poor pay when compared with the gargantuan profits their employers make.

At the Walmart distribution centre in Mississauga, Payne said workers were trying to organize since December in order to improve their health and safety, scheduling, vacation allotments and wages.

READ: Unionized workers rejecting more deals as fight for wage gains presses on

"Corporations like Walmart make a lot of money and basically workers are saying, 'We just want a fair share here,'" Payne said.

Fusco said Walmart's culture is founded on "transparency, honesty, and direct dialogue with our associates, without involving individuals outside of our organization who don’t know our culture or our business."

What Payne heard from Walmart workers, however, was similar to the refrain during unionization drives Unifor has been involved with in recent years at Amazon.com Inc.'s warehouses as well as Starbucks and Indigo Books & Music locations.

Many of these companies have staunchly fought unionization drives. A push at a warehouse operated by Amazon in Metro Vancouver, for example, has left Unifor with a sealed ballot box while the e-commerce giant quibbles over the legitimacy of the vote.

Payne expects the vote at the Walmart warehouse in Mississauga to inspire staff at the retailer's other sites along with workers in similar roles at other companies to want to sign union cards.

"What these workers have done with their courage and their determination has shown a lot of workers everywhere what's possible right now," she said. 

"That's how big this is."