Frontline retail workers want pay bump as cases spike

Calls for the return of hazard pay are mounting as workers on the front lines of Canada’s retail industry grow increasingly anxious amid rising COVID-19 cases.

While some companies offered so-called hero pay to essential workers at the outset of the pandemic, most wage premiums ended as the first wave ebbed.

Yet retail workers say morale is lagging as COVID-19 cases spike across much of the country.

Without a pay bump that recognizes the risk of working during a pandemic, they say workers are increasingly calling in sick — leaving fewer staff to enforce rules around mask-wearing and physical distancing.

Some companies have preemptively addressed the issue.

Lowe’s Canada said this week it plans to pay a discretionary bonus to all eligible Lowe’s, RONA and Reno-Depot workers.

The Boucherville, Que., home improvement retailer said full-time staff will receive $300 later this month, with $150 for part-time staff. The October bonus is in addition to bonuses paid in March and August, and $2 per hour wage premium paid from April to July.

The Home Depot Canada said it has implemented paid sick leave benefits and is providing workers with an ongoing weekly bonus — $100 for full-time workers and $50 for part-time workers.

Meanwhile, Chapman’s Ice Cream recently made its $2 an hour pandemic pay raise permanent.

Making the pay bump permanent is something unions across the country are calling for, arguing that the wage premium not only recognizes the ongoing threat of COVID-19 but also pays workers a living wage.

Yet some retailers have argued that they are now operating safely in a “new normal.”

In a June statement, Loblaw Companies Ltd. chairman Galen Weston called it “the right time to end the temporary pay premium we introduced at the beginning of the pandemic.”