Calgary Co-op bumps up wages for front-line workers amid crisis
Calgary Co-op will hike wages for its front-line employees during the COVID-19 crisis.
The retailer announced Wednesday that all of its store-team hourly workers across all lines of business — including grocery, gas station, liquor, cannabis, pharmacy and home health care — will receive an additional $2.50 an hour, retroactive to March 8 and effective until at least May 2.
Calgary Co-op CEO Ken Keelor declined to put a dollar figure on what the wage increase would cost the company, saying only that it is “substantial.”
“It’s a significant amount of money, I’ll leave it at that,” Keelor said. “We couldn’t do this indefinitely.”
Keelor said raising employees’ wages is the “right thing to do,” given the extra pressures and very real health risks that grocery-store and other retail workers face right now as they try to keep shelves stocked for anxious community members.
“We’ve known since the very start how hard our team was going to have to work, that they’d be doing the heavy lifting while other people are sitting at home,” he said. “We want to make sure our team realizes that there’s huge appreciation for what they’re doing.”
In announcing the wage top-up program, Calgary Co-op — which has 3,850 employees in total and does $1.2 billion in annual sales — joins a growing list of grocers taking steps to recognize their employees’ efforts in the face of COVID-19. National chains including Sobeys, Loblaw and Metro have all announced wage hikes for workers in recent days, though those companies’ hourly increases — each are providing $2-per-hour bumps — are not as large as Calgary Co-op’s.
Thomas Hesse, president of UFCW Local 401 — which represents grocery workers at Alberta Safeways, Sobeys and Superstores (it does not represent Calgary Coop workers) — said he is pleased to see employers responding to his union’s call to recognize the efforts of employees during this national crisis.
“These programs are imperfect, they’re temporary,” Hesse said. “But they have gone a certain distance.”
Hesse said the COVID-19 situation has raised awareness of the importance of food workers, a group of individuals who don’t typically receive a great deal of thanks or praise for the work they do.
“Our members are unassuming,
Our members are unassuming, humble people. Like all the rest of us, they want to earn a living and they also want to help.
humble people. Like all the rest of us, they want to earn a living and they also want to help,” he said. “And now they have this superstardom, this new recognition of their importance.”
Also on Wednesday, Calgary Coop announced it is actively hiring new temporary, part-time workers to help meet increased demand in its stores. The retailer has added a number of enhanced health and sanitization initiatives, including the removal of all self-serve food stations and installing distancing markers at cash registers.
Plexiglas dividers to protect cashiers are being installed in Calgary Co-op stores this week. The company began offering designated shopping hours for seniors and the immune-compromised this week, and continues to offer its free “care package” program to individuals quarantined as directed by Alberta Health Services.