It has been two weeks since 101 employees lost their unionized jobs at Mama Earth Organics, a Toronto based grocery and produce delivery service. The job losses came after the company decided to relocate their operations from East York to Mississauga.
Mama Earth hourly workers were represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local 1006A. Employees unload, sort, pack, and deliver vegetables and specialty grocery items across the GTA and as far as Peterborough and London.
The union’s collective agreement, ratified in 2023, allowed for the workers and union recognition to move if the East York facility relocated. This only applied within the city of Toronto, which Mississauga is not a part of.
Matt Davis, a former driver at Mama Earth, said the change left many workers feeling hopeless.
“People had this look in their eyes, like a 1000 mile stare,” Davis said in an interview with rabble.ca. “Then towards the end of the day, as the day shift in the warehouse was leaving, I was there with my van. There were a lot of tears, and people sort of slowly made their way out.”
Davis said the sting of the job loss was only sharpened by the current state of the job market. He said many were worried because it is hard to find work right now. In Canada, the unemployment rate sat at 6.9 per cent in April, a six month high.
Davis said workers will continue to fight for jobs at the Mississauga facility. At the same time, workers want Mama Earth customers to be informed about the company’s decision. He said Mama Earth presents itself as a company that wants to make the world a better place through people’s food choices.
“This move to terminate over 100 people with the minimum legal notice, no guarantee to continue their jobs at the new facility and no recognition of the union that our coworkers previously fought so hard to secure, I don’t know if that fits with that that kind of image of sustainability and putting people on the planet first,” Davis said. “We want to give the company the chance to do the right thing, and to begin to right some of these wrongs, because we don’t want to drag the company down.”
Ran Goel, CEO of Mama Earth, said his heart goes out to the employees impacted by the move but it had to be done because their lease was expiring and a renewal would come with much higher rent prices.
“The building also needed over $1 million of repairs which we cannot afford. Over a quarter of impacted staff have indeed moved over the new facility but for many the commute was too far,” Goel said.
He added that UFCW itself hasn’t alleged any union busting or similar behaviour. As well, he said Mama Earth went above and beyond its legal obligations. Despite Goel’s assertions, one customer felt she could no longer continue doing business with Mama Earth.
“It was so blatantly evil and corrupt in my eyes,” said Julia Mathieson, who was subscribed to Mama Earth’s services for seven months. “I cancelled my subscription without hesitation the next day. It wasn’t a hard decision, despite how much I had grown to love and rely on the boxes, but there was no way I would continue to support and give my money to a company who would pull this.”
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For Davis, this loss of union representation is emblematic of the larger challenges facing the labour movement in Canada right now.
“I think our situation at Mama Earth is a call, even in a small way, to the labor movement to look very seriously and critically at what’s happening to our unions and at the different ways that employers are going after us and the ways that the law is currently not sufficient in protecting us,” he said.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
