About 100 Metro workers in the fourth month of a continuing strike are alleged to have barged into a Montreal call centre on July 8, with court documents claiming they pushed a security guard, vandalized computers and spilled a bucket of mop water on the floor.
According to an injunction request filed July 14, the Metro workers called employees at IO Solutions “scabs,” bringing many at the downtown Montreal call centre to tears.
Superior Court Judge Gregory Moore approved IO Solutions’s request July 15, issuing a temporary injunction that bars Metro employees from blocking the call centre’s entrance, intimidating staff or damaging equipment.
IO Solutions’s injunction request was the latest in a series of court filings that have piled up in the months since about 550 Metro warehouse workers, office employees and transport staff walked off the job March 30. Injunction requests filed by Metro, two fruit and vegetable distributors, and now by IO Solutions were all successful, resulting in orders that Metro workers avoid interfering with the companies’ operations and limit the size of protests outside their locations.
The CSN-affiliated union, for its part, has accused Metro of violating Quebec’s anti-scab rules, which prohibit employers from hiring strikebreakers when workers walk off the job. A Ministry of Labour investigation in March supported the union’s claim. The union is now suing Metro in Quebec’s labour tribunal.
Around 10 a.m. on July 8, IO Solutions said in its court filing, the Metro workers forced their way into the call centre, “violently pushing” a security guard “while he was attempting to prevent individuals from entering the (IO Solutions) offices.”
Striking workers allegedly vandalized materials, including keyboards, chairs and computer screens, flipped over a table, knocked over a mop bucket and tore up documents.
The company called police, the filing said.
Montreal police spokesperson Johany Charland confirmed Thursday that police had been called to an office in the building where IO Solutions is located. Police observed “certain acts of mischief,” she said, adding an investigation was still underway.
The action “generated a climate of fear and stress for employees,” the IO Solutions filing said, “even though (IO Solutions) isn’t implicated in the conflict between Metro and its employees.”
Metro is a client of IO Solutions, the filing said.
The union declined The Gazette’s request for comment, while IO Solutions didn’t respond to a request.
In an email, Metro spokesperson Geneviève Grégoire said the grocer “firmly condemns these gestures, which are unacceptable and don’t advance the negotiation.”
Grégoire denied the strikebreaking allegations, asserting “Metro has fully complied with the labour code and put in measures to continue to meet the needs of its clientele across Quebec within the applicable legal framework.”
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