It has been two weeks since 101 employees lost their unionized jobs at Mama Earth Organics, a Toronto based grocery and produce delivery service. The job losses came after the company decided to relocate their operations from East York to Mississauga.

Mama Earth hourly workers were represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local 1006A. Employees unload, sort, pack, and deliver vegetables and specialty grocery items across the GTA and as far as Peterborough and London.

The union’s collective agreement, ratified in 2023, allowed for the workers and union recognition to move if the East York facility relocated. This only applied within the city of Toronto, which Mississauga is not a part of. 

Matt Davis, a former driver at Mama Earth, said the change left many workers feeling hopeless. 

“People had this look in their eyes, like a 1000 mile stare,” Davis said in an interview with rabble.ca. “Then towards the end of the day, as the day shift in the warehouse was leaving, I was there with my van. There were a lot of tears, and people sort of slowly made their way out.” 

Davis said the sting of the job loss was only sharpened by the current state of the job market. He said many were worried because it is hard to find work right now. In Canada, the unemployment rate sat at 6.9 per cent in April, a six month high. 

Davis said workers will continue to fight for jobs at the Mississauga facility. At the same time, workers want Mama Earth customers to be informed about the company’s decision. He said Mama Earth presents itself as a company that wants to make the world a better place through people’s food choices. 

“This move to terminate over 100 people with the minimum legal notice, no guarantee to continue their jobs at the new facility and no recognition of the union that our coworkers previously fought so hard to secure, I don’t know if that fits with that that kind of image of sustainability and putting people on the planet first,” Davis said. “We want to give the company the chance to do the right thing, and to begin to right some of these wrongs, because we don’t want to drag the company down.”

Ran Goel, CEO of Mama Earth, said his heart goes out to the employees impacted by the move but it had to be done because their lease was expiring and a renewal would come with much higher rent prices. 

“The building also needed over $1 million of repairs which we cannot afford. Over a quarter of impacted staff have indeed moved over the new facility but for many the commute was too far,” Goel said. 

He added that UFCW itself hasn’t alleged any union busting or similar behaviour. As well, he said Mama Earth went above and beyond its legal obligations. Despite Goel’s assertions, one customer felt she could no longer continue doing business with Mama Earth. 

“It was so blatantly evil and corrupt in my eyes,” said Julia Mathieson, who was subscribed to Mama Earth’s services for seven months. “I cancelled my subscription without hesitation the next day. It wasn’t a hard decision, despite how much I had grown to love and rely on the boxes, but there was no way I would continue to support and give my money to a company who would pull this.” 

LISTEN: Labour Fair 2026 Keynote: New modes of organizing for a working peoples’ city

For Davis, this loss of union representation is emblematic of the larger challenges facing the labour movement in Canada right now. 

“I think our situation at Mama Earth is a call, even in a small way, to the labor movement to look very seriously and critically at what’s happening to our unions and at the different ways that employers are going after us and the ways that the law is currently not sufficient in protecting us,” he said.

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The fight to repeal section 107 from the Canadian Labour Code has progressed after the House of Commons had the second reading of the bill aimed at abolishing it. 

Leaders from the NDP and Canada’s union movement have rallied around the bill, framing the repeal of section 107 as key to defending the right to strike. At the same time, smaller labour organizations are working to reclaim the political strike as a tool the labour movement can wield to assert workers’ rights. 

Bill C-247 was tabled in October and highlights how section 107 of the labour code has been used in the last two years to tilt the scales during collective bargaining. Section 107 gives the labour minister the power to do things that “seem likely to maintain or secure industrial peace” when they deem it expedient.  

Section 107 has been invoked eight times in the last two years and has ended legal strikes being held by rail workers, flight attendants and postal workers. 

“Every single time that a government oversteps and uses 107 or any other legislation to send workers back to work, they are undermining the work that happens at the [bargaining] table,” said Siobhan Vipond, vice president of the Canadian Labour Congress. “Let us be clear, every single time that 107 has been used by this government, it has been used in favor of the employer.” 

NDP leader, Avi Lewis, expressed support for repealing section 107 in hopes it will balance the power at the bargaining table. 

“No worker wants to give up their own wages to go on a picket line,” Lewis said, “but when you’re talking about bargaining in Canada, in a cost of living crisis, where people cannot afford groceries, cannot afford rent and mortgages, being paid a fair wage is our only hope for workers in Canada of getting out of this cost of living emergency, and it’s only the right to strike that balances the scales in labor negotiations, so that employers can’t just do what they want.”

For organizers like Emile Lacombe, who has been organizing with the Alliance Ouvrière (Worker’s Alliance) since 2024, this effort to amend the labour code is positive. But the ongoing attack on the right to strike signals a need to build more labour militancy. 

“What we’re seeing right now is that the government is taking advantage of the fact that we’re disorganized, that we’re used to taking the legal route,” Lacombe said in an interview with rabble.ca. “The thing is that they have the upper hand on that department, because they can change laws, the bosses can hire better lawyers than us.”

LISTEN: Emile Lacombe talks about the political strike on rabble radio

Lacombe joined a panel at a conference held by the International League of People’s Struggles last week where he discussed the importance of reclaiming the political strike, a strike that happens not just to secure a fair deal but also to assert broader political or social demands. 

Representing the Workers Alliance Emile spoke alongside speakers with the Immigrant Workers Centre, the International Migrants Alliance, Migrante Canada and the 1919 Workers Collective. All groups agreed that labour should build towards the political strike. 

Lacombe highlighted that the history of the political strike is strong in Canada. Workers used the strike to fight against government austerity in 2015 and to stand up for the environment in 2019. Now, in a time where the NDP and unions are fighting to protect the right to strike, Lacombe said these large mobilizations of workers may be exactly what’s needed to demonstrate that workers’ hard fought wins cannot just be taken away.  
“If we want the right to strike, we need to prove it in action and to show it by defying back to work orders,” Lacombe said. “That’s the only way that we can ensure that we have this right.”

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Even in the best case scenario, Canadians are set to pay $12 billion over the next 12 months due higher oil prices, a report by the Centre for future Work shows. Economist Jim Stanford said in the report that Canadians should fight the dominant narrative that these increased price pressures are a natural and inevitable side effect of the war in Iran. 

“This is a lie intended to prevent Canadians from asking hard questions about why their living standards are being undermined by a far-off war that does not involve them,” he wrote in the report. “Prices for petroleum products have not shot up because of natural market forces. Events in the Persian Gulf are dramatically affecting our economy because of a policy choice, not laws of economic nature.” 

The report projected that a lack of proper policy interventions will force Canadians to pay billions. The U.S. and Israel’s attacks on Iran led to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz which remains closed as of May 21. 

Even if the Strait reopened immediately, Canadian consumers would pay an additional $12 billion over 12 months in direct higher fuel costs. If the Strait remains closed for three more months – approximately the amount of time it has been closed so far – Canadians would pay $30.6 billion in higher costs. Six more months, and Canadians pay $41.8 billion. 

Canada is a net exporter of oil. As such, Stanford argues that Canadian oil prices don’t need to follow global trends too closely. However, these price shocks are occurring to line the pockets of big oil companies. 

“They never waste a crisis,” Stanford said in an April webinar on oil prices. “Whatever the crisis of the moment is, it’s another reason to build a pipeline.” 

Harnessing the profitability of the current crisis will increase profit margins for oil companies with devastating consequences for Canadian workers. In 2022, oil prices spiked in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These price spikes were also criticized for being driven by profiteering rather than genuine market pressures.

In the subsequent years after the 2022 spike, the Bank of Canada raised interest rates to try and reign in inflation caused by higher oil prices. These measures pushed unemployment higher. 

Labour and environmental groups are calling for a tax on the profits gleaned from rising oil prices to combat profiteering and serve the average Canadian. The Council of Canadians, 350.org Canada and the Alberta Federation of Labour have all called for a tax on oil companies’ war profits with the income being used to support Canadian households affected by the cost of living crisis. 

Revenue from a tax on oil profits could also fund other forms of energy in Canada, Stanford noted in his report. 

“Ultimately, the most certain way to reduce Canadians’ exposure to future volatility in oil prices will be to reduce the role of those products in the national energy system,” he wrote. “There are many reasons to support and accelerate the coming transition toward renewable and non-emitting sources of energy, including fulfilling Canada’s climate commitments and reducing energy costs. The consequences of the current oil price shock reinforce those motivations.” 

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