MONTREAL — In a historic first, over 800 workers at Walmart’s Mississauga, Ontario, warehouse voted by 93% to approve their first union contract May 7. The members of Unifor Local 252 became the first workers to successfully win a union contract with Walmart anywhere in North America.
Over the past decades, workers at several stores in Quebec and Ontario have won certification but none succeeded in getting a contract or keeping the union.
Hundreds of Walmart fleet drivers in Alberta and British Columbia won union certification in late 2024 and early 2025, and will be buoyed in their ongoing contract battles by Local 252’s victory.
Products for Walmart stores all over Ontario are packed and delivered out of Mississauga.
“This is a siren call for the Canadian labor movement and union movement worldwide,” Justin Gniposky, Unifor’s national director of organizing, told the Militant in a phone interview.
The two-year contract provides a wage raise of up to $5 per hour in the first year and a 3% raise in the second. It also says that union members won’t be left behind by wages offered to other Walmart warehouse workers in Canada.
In September 2024, the day after the Mississauga warehouse workers had voted for the union by 56%, Walmart gave all logistics chain employees in Canada a substantial raise — except for these 800. As a result, nonunion Walmart workers had been earning up to $4 an hour more than those union members. This contract will eliminate the gap.
The contract also provided a lump sum payment ranging from four thousand two hundred and fifty Canadian dollars ($3,090) to CA$8,750 to compensate for the past wage increases denied union members.
Two ratification meetings were held May 7, attended by close to 700 union members.
“The loudest applause,” said Gniposky, “was for the limiting of contracting out. This is about job security.
“All these gains are a reflection of the bargaining committee’s work,” he said. “These folks work in the plant. Many were the very first card signers. They walked through a two-and-a-half-year fight to get this.” The unionists leafleted the parking lot with information in multiple languages, spoke up in company-organized meetings in the plant and wore union T-shirts to work.
“I think it’s great news. We have been waiting for this for over 28 years,” a longtime worker at the warehouse wrote to the Militant.
“While we continue to believe third-party representation is not in the best interest of our associates, we respect their decision,” a Walmart spokesperson told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
The Unifor members in Mississauga have set an example for working people everywhere, including the 1.6 million Walmart workers in the U.S.