No Frills Workers at 17 Ontario Supermarkets Ratify Deal With Wage Gains, Full-Time Jobs

No Frills workers at 17 stores in Ontario, Canada, have ratified a new collective agreement that raises wages and expands the number of full-time jobs, the union representing them has confirmed.

A press release from Unifor said the deal, which covers almost 1,300 workers, will see wages rise between $3.20 and $4.50 an hour over the duration of the agreement.

The five-year contract also includes a new benefits program for part-time workers and creates 30 new full-time positions to be filled within a year.

[Read more: "Safeway, FreshCo Workers Ratify Historic New Contract"]

"Our union's fight is to improve wages and working conditions for grocery store workers. I am very proud of the work of our bargaining committee at No Frills who fought hard for this deal for their members," Unifor national president Lana Payne said in the press release.

No Frills is the discount grocery banner owned by Loblaw Cos. Ltd. The workers were negotiating with a committee representing the owners of the No Frills franchises.

"We're pleased that the agreement has been ratified and that customers can continue to rely on us for affordable food options, particularly as we go into the holiday season," said Aylmer No Frills owner Ryan Barrett on behalf of the owners' committee in a statement provided by Loblaw.

The workers reached a tentative agreement last Sunday (Nov. 19) as a strike deadline approached.

After a five-week strike over the summer by Metro workers in the Greater Toronto Area resulted in significant gains, Unifor was seeking a similar win for the No Frills employees.

"Unifor managed to extend the pattern agreement with Metro to No Frills. And that's a major accomplishment that will likely have profound implications for the industry, in the sense that it will likely lift wages for all grocery store workers, both union and non-union,'' said Larry Savage, a professor in the labor studies department at Brock University.

While the original Metro agreement already had the potential to influence other workplaces and collective agreements, successfully replicating it at another major chain will help strengthen that "domino effect," he said.

"It sends the signal there that the Metro agreement was not some fluke, that the Metro agreement becomes the new normal," he said.

The wage gains in the agreement are front-loaded, with full-time workers getting a $2-an-hour raise within the first five months and part-time employees getting $1.50.

Unifor previously said the average hourly wage for full-time workers under the No Frills agreement was $19.89, while the average hourly wage for part-time workers excluding students was $16.95. Six percent of workers across the stores had full-time positions.

The addition of 30 full-time jobs is also an impressive win, noted Savage.

The next big round of bargaining for grocery workers will be for the roughly 1,600 workers at Loblaw-owned Dominion stores in Newfoundland in Labrador in the new year, Unifor said.