VANCOUVER — Ontario drivers for Voilà, Sobeys’s online grocery-delivery service, are looking to join a union over concerns about pay and working conditions, including what they believe to be constant surveillance in their trucks.

“We are getting very close to making the application and the more support that we can get, the better it is for worker power,” said Debora De Angelis, United Food and Commercial Workers Canada’s regional director for Ontario.

The union and the company don’t agree on which workers or how many of them would be in the new bargaining unit. The union had estimated it to be roughly 100 workers at one facility, but now says the “number is constantly changing,” in part due to high turnover. In late June, organizers believed they had reached the 40 per cent support threshold required to hold a certification vote at one of the locations, but later withdrew its application and continues to work on getting employees to sign union cards.

The grocery-store chain Sobeys partnered with U.K.-based Ocado Group in early 2018 to build out its online shopping service using Ocado’s technology for ordering, fulfillment and delivery. The company builds warehouses equipped with robotics that move along a grid to pick and pack orders, going fast enough to assemble a 50-item order within minutes. The trucks, meanwhile, are equipped with Ocado’s technology that provides optimal routes to drivers, who are employed by Sobeys.

Sobeys has since built and opened two automated warehouses—one in Vaughan, Ont., and one in Montreal. The company expedited plans for two more after the COVID-19 pandemic supercharged online shopping demand. It has also opened so-called “spoke” locations in Etobicoke, Ottawa and Quebec City to provide Voilà service from those locations.

Drivers at the Vaughan warehouse and Etobicoke spoke location reached out to UFCW Canada near the end of 2021, said De Angelis. A primary concern at the time, they said, was not being allowed to keep their cash tips, which Voilà’s website invites customers to give at the door. Empire, the parent company of Sobeys, did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But the union said the company reversed the tipping policy this past January after it started organizing drivers. 

The drivers also took issue with being paid below industry standards. Many of the drivers make about $19.25, according to De Angelis, while other companies pay between $22 and $25 for similar roles. They’ve also noticed that newer employees have been starting at higher wages, she said, as the company competes to entice workers during a labour crunch.

Beyond financial grievances, the drivers were concerned about health, safety and workload, common issues for employees in the delivery and logistics space. The company had roughly doubled the number of deliveries drivers are required to make each day, to almost 30, De Angelis said. After the union filed its application, the company reduced the loads to about 15 to 20 per eight- to 10-hour shift, she said. There were also other issues with the vehicles: some drivers, De Angelis said, found ticks in the cabs of their trucks.

Many feel Ocado’s technology in the trucks is intrusive. While they drive, a dashboard camera points at them and records video, De Angelis said, and some suspect it is also recording audio. A Panasonic promotional video showing off the tablet and docking station displays the inside of an Ocado truck with a camera above a mounted screen, which has the driver’s route. It’s an increasingly typical practice as e-commerce firms rush to fulfill orders faster. In its trucks, Amazon has installed Netradyne artificial intelligence and video cameras that have 270-degree coverage, ostensibly to improve safety.

“Unionization will absolutely help” workers resolve some of these issues, said Viet Vu, manager of economic research at Toronto’s Brookfield Institute. A report from the UC Berkeley Labor Center on e-commerce and the future of food-retail work found delivery workers represented by unions have “better working conditions,” including pay and hours. But the e-commerce demand bump caused by the pandemic has softened, Vu noted, and retailers are grappling with the large investments they’ve made to provide online shopping services. 

That could mean that a successful unionization effort—which is likely to add to the employer’s costs—could make the service unsustainable, said Vu. Sobeys, he added, may be trying to address some of the workers’ concerns because “they would rather not have a union.”

UFCW Canada appears to view the Voilà drivers differently than it does other gig-economy delivery workers. The union recently faced criticism for taking the position that drivers for app-based services like Uber should not be classified as employees of the companies they represent.

In the case of Sobeys, UFCW Canada officials visited the two Ontario locations to garner support for unionization, work that De Angelis said is difficult when the employees believe they’re under constant surveillance. Union officials in Ontario aren’t allowed to enter the warehouse premises, she added, and have few other opportunities to approach the employees because, unlike shift workers in a typical factory, they come and go sporadically.

The union worked toward having drivers at both warehouses sign union cards. The Ontario Labour Relations Act requires that at least 40 per cent of a proposed bargaining unit sign cards before the union can hold a vote. At the Etobicoke location, UFCW Canada submitted an application for certification in late June.

Sobeys, which is named as the responding applicant, disputed the application with the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB). The company claimed the union’s estimate of the number of employees in the proposed bargaining unit was wrong. It also suggested a different bargaining unit altogether. The OLRB sided with the union, finding its bargaining unit “could be appropriate” and the two parties’ figures were not significantly different. It scheduled a vote for June 29.

However, a few days before the vote, the union informed the OLRB that it had conceded to Sobeys’s challenge. The application was dismissed and the vote was cancelled.

Sobeys then requested the OLRB ban UFCW Canada from reapplying for a year, noting the board can do so if an application is withdrawn before a vote is held. In late July, the board denied Sobeys’s request.

De Angelis said UFCW Canada wanted more support to increase the likelihood of a successful vote. Union organizers have continued to canvass at both Ontario locations in recent weeks and say more drivers have been signing cards. De Angelis declined to disclose how much support the union has garnered, but said it is “always confident” about its drives.

“We wouldn’t be at Voilà by Sobeys if the workers didn’t ask us to be at Voilà by Sobeys,” she said, adding, “we’ll be there as long as workers are calling us, asking us to be there, signing union cards.”