MONTREAL: The spookiest thing about this Halloween isn’t the spider and ghost decorations, but the dehumanizing treatment of those packing and shipping them to retail stores in Montreal.
Dollarama warehouse workers will protest in front of a retail store in Saint-Hubert Plaza from one to three in the afternoon this Halloween. Workers are fed up of being being paid through temporary placement agencies and demand to be official Dollarama employees.
“We’re treated like robots. They don’t care about us,” says a current Dollarama worker who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of management reprisals. “It’s dangerous, exhausting work and there’s no one to listen to our concerns, no one to answer our questions.”
The worker reports frustration that the agency isn’t present to listen to his concerns, despite the same agency taking a cut of his salary.
Halloween may be a highlight for Dollarama shoppers, but for the underpaid and precarious workforce, the season is more “trick” than treat. Masks, candy and costumes are sent out to retail stores thanks to “perma-temp” warehouse workers who remain employees of half a dozen temporary placement agencies no matter how many years they stay in the facility.
The agencies compete against each other within the distribution centre, each rushing to fulfill the high production quotas stipulated in their individual contracts with Dollarama.
“The quota production system is completely unrealistic. To complete the quota I would have to move at an unsafe speed in a cramped environment around heavy pallets,” the current worker reports.
On the same production line, workers performing the same work with the same seniority often receive different pay and premiums depending on which agency hired them. Workers who want to report paycheque or health and safety issues are often bounced back and forth between Dollarama and agency supervisors, frustrating efforts to improve conditions.
“The fact that the agencies main offices are located off site in a completely different part of town means that if a worker wanted to follow up on an issue, they would have to take an extra hour out of their day just to travel to the agency office,” explains Temporary Agency Worker Association (TAWA) community organizer Benoit Scowen. “This discourages workers from bringing up issues.”
While Dollarama shoppers may enjoy using products from the store to create a “wild west” themed Halloween costume, the unconstrained cowboy-style competition between agencies on the facility floor fosters an environment of recklessness at the expense of worker safety and well-being.
“Agencies all competing against each other makes supervisors reluctant to take people off the line for health and safety reasons,” Scowen elaborates. “They’ll push people to go back to work so they can fulfill their contract with Dollarama. It disincentivizes taking health and safety seriously because they just want to keep their people on the ground working.”
Former Dollarama worker and current community organizer with the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) Guarav Sharma experienced constant back pain for months from lifting heavy pallets.
Sharma says it’s “not fair, unjust” that the agencies take a cut of worker’s pay and that workers don’t have health insurance. He thinks Dollarama should hire workers directly and in doing so take full legal responsibility for their workers.
“Remember that the warehouse workers are the ones that actually do the work to keep the shops full of goods to sell!” Sharma says.
Speakers will include:
-
Guarav, Dollarama warehouse worker
-
Job Delicat, Dollarama warehouse worker
-
Julius, Dollarama warehouse worker
-
Andrés Fontecilla, MNA, Québec Solidaire
-
David Bergeron-Cyr, Président, Fédération du Commerce (FC-CSN)
-
Chantal Ide, Vice-Présidente du Conseil central de Montréal métropolitain- CSN (CCMM-CSN)
