Mental Health Awareness Week will take place May 1-May 7, as part of a national campaign by the Canadian Mental Health Association.

The Ontario Regional Council Employee & Family Assistance Program (EFAP) Standing Committee is working to raise awareness of the importance of mental health, both on the job and in our personal lives, and to eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health.

Earlier this year, the Ontario EFAP committee promoted the sale of a Unifor End the Stigma t-shirt. The response was tremendous. Those who purchased the t-shirt are asked to wear it throughout the week of May 1st to show your support.

Take a photo of you wearing your shirt or holding a print-out of the graphic and share it with communications@unifor.org.

Download the graphics here.

*Please note the order deadline has now passed.

OHS Committees Take Action!

Hand-in-hand with awareness is access to information on prevention.

No workplace is immune from mental injury hazard. That is why our definition of occupational health and safety cannot be limited to physical well-being only; it must include mental well-being as well.

With most adults spending more of their waking hours at their workplace than anywhere else, addressing issues of mental health on the job is crucially important.

Together, we must keep this responsibility to ourselves and to our co-workers in mind during any work activity.

Ensuring a psychologically healthy workplace (a workplace that promotes workers’ psychological well-being and actively works to prevent harm to worker psychological health) is a key function of Occupational Health and Safety Committees (OHSC).

Just like any other hazard at workplace, OHS Committees need to recognize, assess, control, evaluate, review, adjust, monitor and maintain the program.

OHSC’s need to use the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (the Standard) which identifies psychosocial risk factors (workplace factors).

No Unifor member is alone. You can access information on mental health or addiction and substance abuse here.

Additional Resources:

Mental Health Commission of Canada

An Action Guide for Employers: http://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/English/media/3050

Mental Health First Aid: https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.ca

Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS)

Health and Safety Fact Sheets for Mental Health
https://www.ccohs.ca/topics/wellness/mentalhealth/

Courses and E-Learning (some are free!)
https://www.ccohs.ca/topics/wellness/mentalhealth/#ctgt_wb-auto-4

Workplace mental health posters
https://www.ccohs.ca/topics/wellness/mentalhealth/#ctgt_wb-auto-5

Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW)

Mental Injury Prevention Tools –Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) http://www.ohcow.on.ca/edit/files/mip/UsingCOPSOQ.pdf

StressAssess.ca -Workplace and Personal Editions (COPSOQ III, Canadian data) https://stressassess.ca

TORONTO-It would take the average Canadian supermarket worker 340 years to earn Loblaw CEO Galen Weston’s 2022 total compensation of $11.79 million, says Unifor.

“It is twisted that any analysis can find that billionaire grocery baron Galen Weston needs even more money when Loblaw refuses to pay many of its front-line workers a living wage and continues to deny full-time jobs.,” said Lana Payne, Unifor National President. “I understand the pressures that come with leadership, and you cannot for a second convince me that such an increase for one of Canada’s richest people is justified.”

According to Statistics Canada, the average grocery worker in Canada earned $18.97 per hour in 2022. Working a full 35-hour week, with annual earnings of $34,525, it would take more than 340 years to earn his 2022 earnings of $11.79 million.

“It is unjust to divert more money out of the pockets of workers under the notion of needing to incentivize Weston to continue working for his own family business,” said Sharon Walsh, Unifor Retail Sector Director. “Workers in his stores can’t afford the groceries they sell anymore, yet it seems that culturally we are fine with the idea of paying one person the equivalent of generations of workers’ wages in one year, every year.”

Weston received a whopping 55% raise last year on his Loblaw earnings alone. Loblaw also doled out millions more to both CFO Richard Dufresne, whose total compensation went from $1.8 million in 2021 to more than $5.4 million last year, and COO Robert Sawyer, whose total compensation was hiked from $7.4 million in 2021 to just over $9.3 million in 2022.

Compensation increases for the other major grocers are similarly out of touch with workers’ earnings.

Metro CEO Eric La Flèche was paid $5.3 million in total compensation in 2022, up from 2021 earnings of just over five million. Empire Company, which operates Safeway, Sobey’s, FreshCo, Foodland and other grocery brands, paid its CEO Michael Medline more than $8.6 million in total compensation last year, up from just over $7.4 million the year before.

“This year, Unifor grocery workers are at the bargaining table with Loblaw, Metro and Sobeys among others. Let’s see if these companies are as generous with their frontline workers as they are to their executives. We’re putting grocery barons on notice that they cannot continue to pay poverty wages with part-time status for full-time work,” said Payne.

Unifor represents 20,000 workers in Canada’s retail sector, including in supermarkets and warehouses owned and affiliated with Loblaw, Metro and Sobeys.

TORONTO –Unifor is demanding an update on the Competition Bureau’s civil investigation into whether Google has engaged in certain practices that harm competition in the online display advertising industry in Canada.

“Every day that Google is allowed to monopolize ad revenue, more harm is inflicted on the Canadian news industry, which has a negative impact on democracy as a whole,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne.

“This is an important issue and one that our union and media workers have our eyes on. We eagerly anticipate the results of the Competition Bureau’s work.”

The union wrote to Matthew Boswell of the Competition Bureau earlier this week to find out if there has been any movement within the agency to release its findings, since the probe began in October 2021.

The scope of the Competition Bureau investigation is to determine if Google is impeding the success of competitors, resulting in higher prices and reduced choice. Hindering innovation for advertising technology (ad tech) services, and harming advertisers, publishers and consumers.

The investigation includes an order from the Competition Bureau to have Google produce records and written information that are relevant to its inquiry.

Since the time the inquiry began, Canada’s crisis in the news media sector, particularly in newspapers, has continued to worsen. Unifor’s membership has been impacted with hundreds of local news operations shuttering as a result of dropping ad revenue.

As online advertising growth continues to outpace all other segments, traditional media – such as broadcast TV, radio, newspapers and magazines – have been fighting over a dwindling pool of advertising revenue. All the while, Google, Facebook and Amazon now account for 90% of internet ad spending in Canada.

Unifor’s members are very aware that advertising revenue has always been a fundamental building block in the news business.

“The list of dead newspapers reads like a roll call of regional and small-town Canada,” said Unifor Media Director Randy Kitt. “Notice of restructuring is sadly something media workers face on regular basis. News outlets are closing, consolidating and downsizing. We need Google to pay its fair share to save local news.”

In January 2023, the United States federal government and eight states sued Google, claiming the company has an illegal monopoly over online advertising.

In September 2022, a European Union court confirmed an earlier decision to impose a fine on Google and its parent company, Alphabet, for anti-competitive business practices, arising from the company’s use of its market dominance and smartphone technology to unfairly advantage its search engine services.

Based on the negative impacts on the Canadian media sector, and on the precedents set through legal proceedings in other jurisdictions, Unifor believes that Google is guilty of wrongdoing and the Competition Bureau should respond appropriately.

Unifor represents 12,000 journalists and media workers in television, newspapers, magazines, news websites and film production.