United in Struggle

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Shit pay and rising prices are leading to record profits for the barons of the food industry. Food inflation across Canada is at 10% and people can’t keep up with their growing grocery bills. Food workers create all of the profit for the big corporations, but are struggling to afford the products that they create.

Inflation Hurts Us and the Corporations Benefit!

Galen Weston: Superstore and No Frills: Loblaws made an extra million dollars profit a day last year – through price gouging and low wages for workers. Despite Galen Weston’s claims that profit margins are slim in the food industry, these are record profits for Loblaws (which owns NoFrills, SuperStore, and other grocery stores) over COVID.

Medline, the Sobey Family: Safeway and IGA: While workers at Safeway, IGA, and his other supermarkets do the work that make the business profitable, it’s Michael Medline the CEO of Empire Company Limited who got a raise in 2022, up to $8.6 million a year. According to Medline: “Our people – our heroes – define us.” Medline is referring to the frontline workers who earn poverty wages while his net worth grows into the 10s of millions. Meanwhile, the Sobey family, one of the richest in Canada, bolstered their net worth of over $3 Billion off the backs of their “heroes”.

The Sobey Family is the controller of Empire Company Limited, which owns Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, FreshCo, and Farm Boy. According to Empire data from 2020, Empire Company Limited made “approximately $26.6 billion in annual sales” and held “$14.6 billion in assets”. “Empire and its subsidiaries, franchisees and affiliates employ approximately 127,000 people” who create the profit reaped by the corporation while seeing none of the benefit.

Jimmy Pattison: Save on Foods, Nesters, and Buy Low: Jimmy Pattison is often described as a ‘self-made man’. But as he grows his fortune to grotesque extremes it’s important to ask where that wealth comes from. Is it the genius of a great business man? No! Pattison profits off the backs of over 50,000 workers who do the work that makes the Jim Pattison Group one of the biggest corporations in Canada. Pattison profits and we feel the pinch of low wages and high prices. Let’s get organized and fight back.

Every week we talk to workers who tell us that “the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer”. Things are getting worse. What are we going to do about it? We need to organise and “hit em where it hurts”!