Metro, which slashed $2 hourly wage hike for workers, shows huge profits

The third quarter numbers show soaring profits while wages for frontline workers were cut in June.

Just a couple of weeks after Loblaw Companies Ltd. tried, ludicrously, to spin quarterly profits of $162 million and increased sales are somehow a negative so as to justify cancelling the $2 an hour wage premium that was being paid to workers, the numbers for the Metro grocery chain are in.

And the profits are rolling in.

According to a press release today (August 12) the third quarter of 2020 saw:

• Sales of $5,835.2 million, up 11.6%

• Food same-store sales up 15.6%

• Pharmacy same-store sales up 1.0%

• Net earnings of $263.5 million, up 18.5% and adjusted net earnings of $272.3 million, up 18.2%

• Fully diluted net earnings per share of $1.04, up 20.9% and adjusted fully diluted net earnings per share of $1.08, up 20.0%

Metro, just like Loblaw and Empire Co. Ltd., cancelled its $2 an hour wage premium on June 13. Though the chains denied collusion, this seemed difficult to believe and even led to executives having to appear before a House of Commons committee, to little effect.

Seeing the Metro numbers the grotesque cancellation of a $2 an hour wage hike that was richly deserved and that should have been made permanent for some of the lowest paid workers in the country is shown to have been driven very clearly by corporate greed. With such soaring profits it is simply impossible to morally justify cutting the wages of workers whose labour continues to generate big profits under the very trying and dangerous working conditions of an ongoing pandemic.