Metro Inc. is seeking an injunction against striking employees who are picketing its warehouses and preventing deliveries to stores in Ontario, the grocer said Friday.
As the secondary picket lines continue for a third day, the union’s actions are generating “significant” food waste, spokeswoman Marie-Claude Bacon said in a statement.
“We owe it to our customers across the province to ensure access to the food they need,” she said.
Workers started picketing two of the company’s distribution warehouses on Wednesday, disrupting the flow of fresh products to the grocer’s Metro and Food Basics stores across the province.
The secondary pickets came midway through the fourth week of a strike by more than 3,700 workers at 27 Greater Toronto Area stores.
Consumers will notice empty shelves for certain products, namely produce, meat and dairy, at stores across the province, Bacon said in an interview.
“At some point it’s going to be too late to be distributed in our stores and it’s going to be wasted,” she said.
Secondary picketing is when striking workers picket at locations other than their own workplace. Unifor started doing this in the week leading up to the warehouse demonstrations at Metro-owned stores not included in the current dispute, Unifor national president Lana Payne told reporters on Wednesday outside one of the distribution centres.
“Frontline grocery workers at Metro will continue their brave fight for decent work and pay over the weekend until the employer comes back to the table with a serious wage offer,” Payne said in a statement Friday when asked about the grocer’s request for an injunction.
The injunction will be heard on Monday, meaning that’s the earliest it could be granted, Bacon said.
But it’s not guaranteed that it will be granted, said Larry Savage, a professor in the labour studies department at Brock University.
Though Metro called the union’s blockage of the warehouses illegal, he said that’s not necessarily the case.
Secondary picketing is legal and is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but a court may deem it illegal if it involves what the court considers to be “wrongful action,” which could include criminal conduct, Savage said.
While Bacon acknowledged secondary picketing is legal, she characterized the round-the-clock blockade with no trucks allowed in or out as illegal.
She said in the interview that Unifor has refused to agree on implementing a protocol for the warehouse pickets before the injunction is heard on Monday, one that might allow for some limited movement of products in the meantime.
Payne called the warehouse picket lines “legal and necessary” in her statement Friday.
The request for an injunction is the latest move in what’s been an increasingly heated week for the labour conflict between Metro and the striking workers.
Metro on Wednesday said it filed an unfair labour complaint against Unifor, arguing the union wasn’t bargaining in good faith by not returning to the table to negotiate.
“The union should act responsibly and be at the table to discuss Metro’s offer,” Bacon said in a statement Friday.
Unifor, meanwhile, has said it’s waiting for a better wage offer before it resumes talks.
“If there is one group of workers who deserve respect, decent pay and decent work, it is grocery store workers in this country,” Payne told reporters on Wednesday.
Metro workers have said they want to get their pandemic ‘hero pay’ of $2 an hour back in bargaining.
This strike began after the workers voted down a tentative agreement that was recommended by their bargaining committee, one that the union described as their best in decades.
That shows how central the ‘hero pay’ issue is to them in this fight, Savage said.
“Yes, it’s about money. But more importantly, for these workers, it’s about respect. Because having that pandemic pay yanked away sent a very clear message to those workers that their labour wasn’t being respected.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
