Workers Just Won the First Walmart Warehouse Union in Canada

Eight hundred workers near Toronto have won the first Walmart warehouse union in Canada or the United States.

“Honestly I was pretty nervous at first because I didn’t want to lose my job,” said twenty-nine-year employee Rodolfo Pilozo, a member of Team Red, the organizing committee behind the September victory.

The Walmart distribution center is in Mississauga, Ontario, an hour from the western New York border. Workers there began organizing last December to join Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union.

Forty percent signed union cards over the summer. Pilozo cited low wages and pressure to work dangerously fast as the main concerns that pushed him and his co-workers to organize.

The retail giant Walmart is not only the biggest private employer in the United States, but also the biggest in the world. In Canada, it has four hundred stores and one hundred thousand workers.

Team Red initiated a red shirt Wednesday, so workers could join even if they didn’t have a Unifor shirt, said Angela Drew Kimelman, an organizer with the union. She said the committee formed after a worker called the union’s organizing hotline.

“We started wearing red [Unifor] hats or red buttons on our shift, and other coworkers would come talk to us about it,” Pilozo said.

“Sometimes I would help hand out the leaflets in the parking lot. When other coworkers saw me and other workers there, and not just the union staff, they started rolling down their windows more and talking to us more.”

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