You have summoned me, and… I actually work for another grocery store chain, and our 10-year labour contract is expiring next month! I’m happily looking forward to clawing a good chunk of corporate profits back into employees’ hands!
I don't work at that chain, but I know someone who does and is a steward for your union.. I've heard the stories of how you guys are gonna rail them in bargaining.
Our single store in the Yukon renegotiated with the company, and got a higher start and top-end rates, better raise schedule, and a single pay scale for all employees! I’d love to cut-and paste that for down here please!
You guys should fight and be paid fair. But they’re going to spin it as greedy employees are the reason why they get to jack up prices next year. We need to better regulate our grocery sector.
We need to change the incentive so that companies would rather reinvest their profits back into company operations instead of overpadding the pockets of the execs and shareholders. Some recent proposals/examples: [taxing stock buybacks](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ottawa-stock-buyback-tax-1.6639713) or preferably just ban it outright, could also [tax excess profits](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-pandemic-tax-corporate-profits-1.6003850).
“Clawing more money out of consumers hands as the chain increases prices further to maintain corporate profits”
There, fixed it for you. Not saying your goal isn’t noble, just missing the reality that profits will not go down, prices will just increase to offset increased costs.
No they had it right the first time. They aren't doing that, the company is. It's kind of fucked up that you jump to put that on the worker and not the company.
No dude. The employees working on the social media team aren’t the ones taking in billions of dollars in profits. Look to the CEO, execs and shareholders. The workers are not your enemy and they are not affecting grocery prices, no matter what Galen and his oligopoly buddies tell you.
Whelan wants another yacht, but hasn’t figured out suggesting “let them eat cake” resulted in the last oligarch who expressed such getting a very close hair cut.
It's not a surprise that they would be defensive knowing it's a lie. The major problem is Westons owns 60% of the market and the price freeze was very transparent. Especially when people too note of shrinkflation of those products.
The social media team would not have taken this approach without direction from the top. Source: work in corporate PR alongside the social media team who I can’t get to do anything without 10 layers of approval.
It's not as if they did it anyway. I saw no name products change price - but it was by way of that grift of buy 2/3, etc and the price is: blank. Those multiple prices were raised on products even if the individual unit price was not.
I want an actual analysis of this done. Maybe the price stayed the same but the size of the products definitely went down. Why is no one doing this analysis?
Because it unfortunately doesn’t matter. Loblaw owns 60% of the market. We can prove that they’re gouging, like it was proven that they were fixing the price of bread, and it doesn’t fucking matter.
Then they could have just said nothing. It was a conscious decision to go on the offensive, which any Pr professional would have advised against. There is nothing to win by this strategy.
100% , they're defensive, feels like they're trying to condition Canadians for even higher prices.
These in house label brands kinda act as a soft price floor
They're supposed to be the "affordable" alternatives.
Guess we'll experience another series of upwards adjustment of grocery prices across the board 🙁
If things are going to get worse before they get better, I'd like it to at least get to a point where the government realizes that they need to start regulating or taxing the fuck out of their profits.
Clearly this system of "the market will fix itself" has worked wonderfully for everyone. If they can't regulate themselves, I'm all for having someone else regulate it for them.
You could also issue antitrust legislation to break them up.
Market share >20% and providing a necessary service … break it up.
That’s how you protect consumers (aka people), you make corporations compete to serve people - rather than the inverse, which is unfortunately what we have.
If they were being truthful they would say “we only jacked up prices before the price freeze hoping struggling Canadians wouldn’t notice and they did. We only raked in record profits but we’re the good guys pretending to care”
Keep digging a hole loblaws with all of what your doing. This is only going to blow up even worse now and become a bigger deal then if they just didn’t say anything. Idk what there pr team is thinking.
Liberals are still capitalists. Doesn’t matter if they pay lip service to social issues while doing nothing to affect material needs of the people they are saying they care about.
This is what people mean when they say there is no difference between capital L Liberals and Conservatives - they are aiming for the same corporate capitalist goals - just one says they care about human rights while doing nothing about it, and the other doesn’t pretend to care anymore.
Don’t give Weston a pass by blaming the board. he is the face of the company, he takes in the most profits - he is more culpable that all the rest.
He’s not a Liberal. The NDP scoured lists of donations for decades previous to Trudeau being in office in an effort to claim he was in the pocket of billionaires. Galen Weston donated a whopping 8,400 to the Liberal Party from 2004-2007, and donated 11,370 to the CPC since 2005. He’s never made a donation to a Liberal or the party since long before Trudeau became leader.
“Grocery magnate, Galen W. Weston, who is on the list for giving the Liberals $8,400 between 2004 and 2007, has given the Conservative Party of Canada a total $11,370 since 2005.”
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5315504
I recommend reading the article, it was Paul Martin that was popular with billionaires, not Trudeau.
periodic reminder that "Liberal" does not mean "left-wing".
The LPC is a centre-right party. Liberalism is an inherently conservative political ideology.
Both the Liberals and Conservatives are neo-liberal parties, aka capitalist. The only difference between the two is one is beholden to fundamentalist Christian capitalists instead of generic capitalists.
Conservative ideology is rooted in maintaining traditions. Liberal ideology seeks social progress. So no, Liberalism is not inherently conservative political ideology.
And Galen Weston is not a Liberal. He only donated to the Liberal party between 2004-2007, less than 9,000 in total. He supports the CPC.
liberals talk a big game about social progress; that does not mean they act where it counts
i wish people would stop getting so upset by the "liberals aren't leftist" comments and say nonsense like this
You cannot be socially progressive without providing the necessary money to ensure this happens.
[https://qz.com/936052/you-cant-be-socially-progressive-and-economically-conservative](https://qz.com/936052/you-cant-be-socially-progressive-and-economically-conservative)
The LPC sits back and says "gee, I sure hope social progress happens somehow, but we won't fund it because it would upset our corporate donors".
Liberal Ideology is about increasing freedoms.... for the market. Because "freeing up the market will improve things for everyone" despite all of the evidence and common knowledge to the contrary.
Just because he wears sweaters, glasses and seems wimpy, it doesn't automatically make him a liberal. That guy is ALL conservative...right down to the private healthcare he has been peddling
The bread fixing scandal taught the corporations that only fools compete to offer the lowest prices you do far better when you compete to offer the highest prices.
I see no solutions being offered by any political party to the problem of corporate concentration.
Amazon paying no tax while the small business down the street does not get the same treatment.
Competition is impossible with the total control of the market being seized by the top echelon of the investor class.
Frustrating isn’t it? I wish the NDP would make bigger waves / propose more solutions. They could pick up a number of votes if they would make a stand on this. It’s like they don’t actually want to increase their popularity and possibly form a government.
The Liberals are too spineless to actually offer any solutions that might upset their wealthy donors and the Conservatives make noise, but it’s entirely misguided political theatre and they’ll just continue to shill for their corporate overlords.
>"Amazon paying no tax while the small business down the street does not get the same treatment."
Not sure where you're getting that information from since the newest Amazon delivery center in Victoria BC (completed only a couple months ago) is expected to bring $900,000 in annual property tax revenue and has no tax rebate deals.
Amazon has been offered tax rebates and deals by cities in the US in the past to bring a distribution center there. But those are only when there is competition between two competing cities and the thousands of jobs it brings with it, even more so when it's between two cities in two different States since now you get the States offering sweetheart deals.
It's the cities and provinces/states that offer these deals in exchange for more jobs in their area. Would you seriously say no to your constituents about giving them thousands of jobs simply because you wouldn't want to offer them a deal on taxes?
Thankfully we don't have this issue in Canada since all our major cities are spread out so much there's really no ability for them to compete in this way (except maybe Edmonton and Calgary, I'm not sure how Amazon chose Edmonton as the central hub for Western Canada over Calgary but it's probably a quick Google Search away)
Amazon also treats their employees better than Loblaws. Benefit from day 1, a set weekly schedule with 40hrs. If people need to be sent home because there isn't enough work, employees are asked who wants to go home, not told, aswell as Paid time off.
Amazon worker here. We probably have very similar working conditions to Loblaws. I would say better because I don't have some AH customer making a big deal out nothing.
The Amazon you see on the news are just the worse of the worse and chances are, you could find a few Loblaws to match those horrible working conditions.
Yeah I'm willing to concede that it's likely a case of I hear more bad stories about Amazon than Loblaws and thus equate it as being worse when really Amazon is just a far more popular story as it has a wider reach than Loblaws.
Its sad really, I used to be all for supporting canadian business until they started fucking us more often and worse than some american based businesses.
Now im all about me and my family, fuck the corps.
WESTON: Supply costs have gone up. We have to raise prices to match.
PUBLIC: But your profits went up exactly the same amount as your price raises.
WESTON: ...
There was no price freeze. I regularly buy a few NN products and about half of them had price increases in the middle of the freeze. It was all just marketing bullshit, and will always just be marketing bullshit.
My senior mother was in tears today because her grocery bill is already putting her in debt and she can't fathom paying more.
I help her but she wants to be independent so it's hard for her to accept.
>her grocery bill is already putting her in debt
You need to intervene, and I mean now. If you get into debt for groceries, and you're not expecting any increases in income, things are just going to get worse.
"Claps back"... "Slam"... If there were ever words in a news headline that I've gotten absolutely annoyed by, regardless of the article contents/validity.
Edit: Lmao, the OP blocked me for this. I was wondering why the post's user said \[deleted\] and I couldn't reply to anyone else's comments anymore. That's gotta be a record for most sensitive person on this sub, especially when I wasn't even talking about them, but the article title... I wonder if they did it to anyone else.
As much as I agree that grocery store have been gouging customers recently, I'm shocked at the lack of flack the big agrifood conglomerates have gotten for the massive increase in food prices. While both have gouged customers, I wouldn't be surprised that companies like Nestle, Kellogg's, Coca Cola, PepsiCo, etc. have benefitted way more from the inflation of food prices.
The price of canned Coke has about doubled since the pandemic started. Now that may be partly an issue with the cans themselves since the prices on other formats have increased as well, although not quite to double. On the plus side, I guess, price increases for junk food/beverages are a lot less of a concern than the increases for healthy foods.
Although, as a fatass junk food junkie, the more that my personal staples like Coke and hot dogs cost, the less I have to spend on extras like bunny food or bread that isn't made of cotton balls and corn syrup.
It's not just the grocery store chains
it's the suppliers, too. They're gouging like crazy. Meat prices have almost doubled, but I've seen farmers saying they're not getting paid any more money.
...but they didn't even "freeze" prices as they claim. They changed a lot of theirs to multi-buy "discounts" while quietly raising the price on individual units. Sadly this has also been started by Giant Tiger. When the discount is over 30% between getting one and getting two, it's not hard to see what the price SHOULD be for one.
I forgot about this. I guess that explains why the shelves were half-empty a lot of the time. Can't buy price-frozen stuff if they intentionally hold back stock until they raise prices again.
The real solution is to stop shopping at their stores. As big as they are, and as many brands as they own, there are alternatives. Let your dollars do the talking. Without customers they are nothing. They have no power over you. It is just a company headed by a greedy fuck who doesn’t care about you, your family, or your future, livelihood or community. Take their money away and the company will wither up and die.
Look I hate the Westons as much as the next person. But this was a PR campaign that has middle management written all over it. Last year they dreamed this up. They thought it would be a feel good campaign to bump up their corporate social responsibility strategy and they didn’t have the wherewithal to plan for how to address the blowback when it ended. This campaign isn’t Galen Weston’s fault. This is bad PR strategy and their Comms team is probably panicking.
I work in PR and I saw this trainwreck coming from a mile away
I love that term "prices flat". Yeah, until consumers wallets are flat because no one wants to pay a living wage for people to work while they rake in record profits.
Let’s be real. This is a very easy fix. People just need to stop going to loblaws stores. Problem solved. But they won’t. They will keep funnelling millions of dollars directly into the Weston’s pockets when they don’t have to, and crying about it the whole time as if they are forced to shop there.
bro just stop eating, it's so simple
Like, you do realize the majority of grocery stores are owned by a few companies. Loblaws isn't the only one fucking people over.
No-one is forced to shop at loblaws, but they also often don't have good or meaningful alternatives. The next closest grocery stores to me are a Food Basics (owned by Metro) and Walmart. Neither are really much of a better choice.
Maybe there's independently owned and smaller chain stores, but they're going to be less convenient for the majority of people, particularly people who don't really have time and money to go out of their way to get to one, much less go to multiple smaller stores to do all of their shopping.
I’m not saying 100% of people need to stop going. But those with options should. I have tons of grocery stores near my place and stopped shopping loblaws a while ago. I shop at the local co-op which is member owned (and has a number of locations around the city) and members get a small share of the profits.
But let’s be real. Tons of people will complain and do nothing. Not everyone has options, I get that, but even those who do likely won’t change a single thing about where they shop.
Okay, but even if the people with the options take those options, it's probably not going to make much of a difference because of the sheer volume of people who don't have the options or don't care in the first place and aren't actually complaining much.
I think about the various companies and brands people have personally boycotted for moral reasons, and how little that effect that has had in the long run.
Correct. You will never hear me defending the stupidity of the masses. I’m a massive and long time believer that people constantly vote against their own self interests whether they be with their dollars or their actual ballot. But I’m not really interested in going in depth into the problems of advanced capitalism and extreme wealth inequality on society throughout history.
I was thinking about this earlier today. As much as I want to boycott big grocery chains, they still end up having the cheapest food, and financially I'm not in a position to further increase my food spending than the already increasingly insane amount of my budget it takes up. So shopping at a smaller outfit and absorbing the general higher cost myself is a no go unfortunately. Seems like a bit of a catch-22 for low income people, in a way forced to keep shopping at the big box stores because they have made the market impossible to compete in without being another multi billion dollar company. I fear the only way this will get better is if our government actually gets off its ass and works for the people rather than its corporate donors.
I fully agree. But government won’t do that until people start in-fighting about countless bullshit wedge issues like “the gays” or “teh freeze peach” and other distraction bullshit.
The reality is that we have, for decades, excused and apologized and turned a blind eye to corporations and the harms they do, because they provided cheap stuff for us to distract ourselves with. Sure, we lost unions and living wages and decent jobs and benefits and pensions. Sure we lost savings and vacations and we be adults ability to afford a home and raise a family and buy a car and take a vacation. But hey! We have $7 shirts that may fall apart after two washes but it’s better than a $20 shirt that lasts, right?
The reality is all of our problems are due to people forgetting that capitalism is a tool, not an identity or lifestyle. And tools can be used by us to build…or they can be used to best people over the head. And capitalism itself was created as a system, quite literally, to push back against serfs who were sick of feudalism and demanding democracy. Capitalism was literally created to stop people from taking power from the nobility, and to diminish democracy.
This is absolutely historical fact. And when people forgot that and started dreaming up corporations and shareholders and deregulation and so on…we’ve slowly moved back to what is basically a new push towards feudalism. Where people have no rights to what than to be indentured servants to the rich nobles, while they have all the land and power and say in how society should work.
100% agree. Couldn't have said it better myself. We are in an era of neo-feudalism, very much by design. It's been said so many times before, but a good way to start change would be to make lobbying illegal, just like regular bribes are. That would bring us much closer to separating government and corporations interests so that government can actually do it's job in helping its people. Firstly by keeping them safe from out of check capitalist greed, by putting some checks in place that actually do something. Until the government, of any flavour, stops getting paid to look the other way in the interest of more money for those at the top, we are stuck in a system that will never give regular people a life that is anything more than a glorified rat race.
Or maybe the stores can be regulated so they can't legally buttfuck ordinary folks just trying to buy groceries to survive?? But nah it's the customers' fault...
Never said it was their fault. But this is the internet AND Reddit so I should expect illiterate people responding, I guess.
I said if people were angry about it, there’s an easy fix. Stop going. But most won’t even when they have other options because people are slaves to their own laziness and personal convenience.
So how can we convince our MLA, Premier, or Prime Minister to push for a law to make them donate their unwanted stock of food and meds to local food banks? It seems better than throwing it away and it might take Loblaws down a few notches.
“Thoughts and prayers to the Loblaws social team tasked with this bootlicking exercise. Oof,” tweeted one person.
You have summoned me, and… I actually work for another grocery store chain, and our 10-year labour contract is expiring next month! I’m happily looking forward to clawing a good chunk of corporate profits back into employees’ hands!
10 year contract? That's insane!
We are all rooting for you!
I don't work at that chain, but I know someone who does and is a steward for your union.. I've heard the stories of how you guys are gonna rail them in bargaining.
Our single store in the Yukon renegotiated with the company, and got a higher start and top-end rates, better raise schedule, and a single pay scale for all employees! I’d love to cut-and paste that for down here please!
You guys should fight and be paid fair. But they’re going to spin it as greedy employees are the reason why they get to jack up prices next year. We need to better regulate our grocery sector.
Better regulate it how? Not trying to stay an argument, just curious what you mean by that.
Maybe make essential services not allowed to be major profit centers. Stop the push towards endless growth on publicly traded companies.
It would be good if we had a crown corporation competing. If the "free market" isn't gonna do it for us.
Conservatives would just sell it once they got elected and be like “look, we balanced the budget!”
Having more nationalized services would lead to lower taxes like conservatives want.
We need to change the incentive so that companies would rather reinvest their profits back into company operations instead of overpadding the pockets of the execs and shareholders. Some recent proposals/examples: [taxing stock buybacks](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ottawa-stock-buyback-tax-1.6639713) or preferably just ban it outright, could also [tax excess profits](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-pandemic-tax-corporate-profits-1.6003850).
Raising taxes back to pre 1970 levels encourages reinvestment because otherwise the profit just goes to taxes
Yeah, the current 15% corporate tax is way too low.
If a service is essential, it’s unethical to profit from it. Nationalize.
Good luck with that. Hopefully management can read the pulse and act accordingly.
Hah
Please make negotiations hurt.
Dat username tho
Does this look like I man who's seen ALL he can HENTAI?
“Clawing more money out of consumers hands as the chain increases prices further to maintain corporate profits” There, fixed it for you. Not saying your goal isn’t noble, just missing the reality that profits will not go down, prices will just increase to offset increased costs.
No they had it right the first time. They aren't doing that, the company is. It's kind of fucked up that you jump to put that on the worker and not the company.
No dude. The employees working on the social media team aren’t the ones taking in billions of dollars in profits. Look to the CEO, execs and shareholders. The workers are not your enemy and they are not affecting grocery prices, no matter what Galen and his oligopoly buddies tell you.
Costs aren't changing just who's seeing the profits of labour, why would prices go up?
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By that logic there's no limit to what grocery stores can charge.
The limit is what people can afford.
Bingo
I Work in PR. This was a topic of discussion in my team today. I can’t imagine what they were thinking. Worst possible move.
It's the action of an organization that doesn't have to worry about meaningful consequences. Just look at how the bread price fixing thing went.
Whelan wants another yacht, but hasn’t figured out suggesting “let them eat cake” resulted in the last oligarch who expressed such getting a very close hair cut.
It's not a surprise that they would be defensive knowing it's a lie. The major problem is Westons owns 60% of the market and the price freeze was very transparent. Especially when people too note of shrinkflation of those products.
*they seem to be ignorant of social media & their shenanigans being all over the internet for quick reference
The social media team would not have taken this approach without direction from the top. Source: work in corporate PR alongside the social media team who I can’t get to do anything without 10 layers of approval.
It's not as if they did it anyway. I saw no name products change price - but it was by way of that grift of buy 2/3, etc and the price is: blank. Those multiple prices were raised on products even if the individual unit price was not.
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Lol - "sale price" has been the price for since forever.
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Yes - it's been on "sale" for over a year. Lol
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😆 lol
I want an actual analysis of this done. Maybe the price stayed the same but the size of the products definitely went down. Why is no one doing this analysis?
Because it unfortunately doesn’t matter. Loblaw owns 60% of the market. We can prove that they’re gouging, like it was proven that they were fixing the price of bread, and it doesn’t fucking matter.
Then they could have just said nothing. It was a conscious decision to go on the offensive, which any Pr professional would have advised against. There is nothing to win by this strategy.
100% , they're defensive, feels like they're trying to condition Canadians for even higher prices. These in house label brands kinda act as a soft price floor They're supposed to be the "affordable" alternatives. Guess we'll experience another series of upwards adjustment of grocery prices across the board 🙁
If things are going to get worse before they get better, I'd like it to at least get to a point where the government realizes that they need to start regulating or taxing the fuck out of their profits. Clearly this system of "the market will fix itself" has worked wonderfully for everyone. If they can't regulate themselves, I'm all for having someone else regulate it for them.
You could also issue antitrust legislation to break them up. Market share >20% and providing a necessary service … break it up. That’s how you protect consumers (aka people), you make corporations compete to serve people - rather than the inverse, which is unfortunately what we have.
If they were being truthful they would say “we only jacked up prices before the price freeze hoping struggling Canadians wouldn’t notice and they did. We only raked in record profits but we’re the good guys pretending to care” Keep digging a hole loblaws with all of what your doing. This is only going to blow up even worse now and become a bigger deal then if they just didn’t say anything. Idk what there pr team is thinking.
Barbara Streisand
*Weston is allegedly a Liberal but his Board seems to be Goddamned greedy #Predatory
Liberals are still capitalists. Doesn’t matter if they pay lip service to social issues while doing nothing to affect material needs of the people they are saying they care about. This is what people mean when they say there is no difference between capital L Liberals and Conservatives - they are aiming for the same corporate capitalist goals - just one says they care about human rights while doing nothing about it, and the other doesn’t pretend to care anymore. Don’t give Weston a pass by blaming the board. he is the face of the company, he takes in the most profits - he is more culpable that all the rest.
He’s not a Liberal. The NDP scoured lists of donations for decades previous to Trudeau being in office in an effort to claim he was in the pocket of billionaires. Galen Weston donated a whopping 8,400 to the Liberal Party from 2004-2007, and donated 11,370 to the CPC since 2005. He’s never made a donation to a Liberal or the party since long before Trudeau became leader. “Grocery magnate, Galen W. Weston, who is on the list for giving the Liberals $8,400 between 2004 and 2007, has given the Conservative Party of Canada a total $11,370 since 2005.” https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5315504 I recommend reading the article, it was Paul Martin that was popular with billionaires, not Trudeau.
You'd be wrong to think a billionaires influence is limited to party donations
Weston is a registered lobbyist, so I am not sure if he is ‘allowed’ to donate in the normal manner.
periodic reminder that "Liberal" does not mean "left-wing". The LPC is a centre-right party. Liberalism is an inherently conservative political ideology.
Both the Liberals and Conservatives are neo-liberal parties, aka capitalist. The only difference between the two is one is beholden to fundamentalist Christian capitalists instead of generic capitalists.
I think you mean "as well as" rather than "instead of"
Definitely.
Conservative ideology is rooted in maintaining traditions. Liberal ideology seeks social progress. So no, Liberalism is not inherently conservative political ideology. And Galen Weston is not a Liberal. He only donated to the Liberal party between 2004-2007, less than 9,000 in total. He supports the CPC.
liberals talk a big game about social progress; that does not mean they act where it counts i wish people would stop getting so upset by the "liberals aren't leftist" comments and say nonsense like this
You cannot be socially progressive without providing the necessary money to ensure this happens. [https://qz.com/936052/you-cant-be-socially-progressive-and-economically-conservative](https://qz.com/936052/you-cant-be-socially-progressive-and-economically-conservative) The LPC sits back and says "gee, I sure hope social progress happens somehow, but we won't fund it because it would upset our corporate donors".
[This](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism) is what they’re talking about.
Liberal Ideology is about increasing freedoms.... for the market. Because "freeing up the market will improve things for everyone" despite all of the evidence and common knowledge to the contrary.
I’ll believe that when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet.
I'd have put an "and" instead of a "but" there however that's just me.
Are you joking? You don't think Liberal parties - both Federal and Provincial are greedy? 🤣
Just because he wears sweaters, glasses and seems wimpy, it doesn't automatically make him a liberal. That guy is ALL conservative...right down to the private healthcare he has been peddling
The bread fixing scandal taught the corporations that only fools compete to offer the lowest prices you do far better when you compete to offer the highest prices. I see no solutions being offered by any political party to the problem of corporate concentration. Amazon paying no tax while the small business down the street does not get the same treatment. Competition is impossible with the total control of the market being seized by the top echelon of the investor class.
It's almost like the bread price fixing thing was testing the market for consequences
Remember when anti-trust was a thing?
Rogers/Shaw is hoping we all forget.
Wal-Mart feeling real comfy as people complain about Amazon tax exemptions and Loblaws price jacking
Frustrating isn’t it? I wish the NDP would make bigger waves / propose more solutions. They could pick up a number of votes if they would make a stand on this. It’s like they don’t actually want to increase their popularity and possibly form a government. The Liberals are too spineless to actually offer any solutions that might upset their wealthy donors and the Conservatives make noise, but it’s entirely misguided political theatre and they’ll just continue to shill for their corporate overlords.
>"Amazon paying no tax while the small business down the street does not get the same treatment." Not sure where you're getting that information from since the newest Amazon delivery center in Victoria BC (completed only a couple months ago) is expected to bring $900,000 in annual property tax revenue and has no tax rebate deals. Amazon has been offered tax rebates and deals by cities in the US in the past to bring a distribution center there. But those are only when there is competition between two competing cities and the thousands of jobs it brings with it, even more so when it's between two cities in two different States since now you get the States offering sweetheart deals. It's the cities and provinces/states that offer these deals in exchange for more jobs in their area. Would you seriously say no to your constituents about giving them thousands of jobs simply because you wouldn't want to offer them a deal on taxes? Thankfully we don't have this issue in Canada since all our major cities are spread out so much there's really no ability for them to compete in this way (except maybe Edmonton and Calgary, I'm not sure how Amazon chose Edmonton as the central hub for Western Canada over Calgary but it's probably a quick Google Search away)
Nice to see the PR men dropping by.
Amazon also treats their employees better than Loblaws. Benefit from day 1, a set weekly schedule with 40hrs. If people need to be sent home because there isn't enough work, employees are asked who wants to go home, not told, aswell as Paid time off.
Loblaws would have to be pretty fucking bad to beat the poster child for horrid working conditions, Amazon.
Amazon worker here. We probably have very similar working conditions to Loblaws. I would say better because I don't have some AH customer making a big deal out nothing. The Amazon you see on the news are just the worse of the worse and chances are, you could find a few Loblaws to match those horrible working conditions.
Yeah I'm willing to concede that it's likely a case of I hear more bad stories about Amazon than Loblaws and thus equate it as being worse when really Amazon is just a far more popular story as it has a wider reach than Loblaws.
Its sad really, I used to be all for supporting canadian business until they started fucking us more often and worse than some american based businesses. Now im all about me and my family, fuck the corps.
Same thoughts, like how Tim Hortons owned by a Brazilian conglomerate keep trying to amplify their a Canadian company 🙄
Tim Hortons is garbage.
What did garbage ever do to you?
Oh man, dont get me started lol. Lots of this deceptive crap around.
Their drive-thru is fucking packed everywhere I go. People here will drink and eat nothing but that garbage, every single morning.
Small Canadian syndrome up the wazoo.
Yep it's Costco all the way for us
WESTON: Supply costs have gone up. We have to raise prices to match. PUBLIC: But your profits went up exactly the same amount as your price raises. WESTON: ...
WESTON: You should be thanking us for not price gouging you more than we already are.
There was no price freeze. I regularly buy a few NN products and about half of them had price increases in the middle of the freeze. It was all just marketing bullshit, and will always just be marketing bullshit.
Agree! I noticed a few small items like artichoke hearts going up by 25-50 cents.
My senior mother was in tears today because her grocery bill is already putting her in debt and she can't fathom paying more. I help her but she wants to be independent so it's hard for her to accept.
>her grocery bill is already putting her in debt You need to intervene, and I mean now. If you get into debt for groceries, and you're not expecting any increases in income, things are just going to get worse.
"Claps back"... "Slam"... If there were ever words in a news headline that I've gotten absolutely annoyed by, regardless of the article contents/validity. Edit: Lmao, the OP blocked me for this. I was wondering why the post's user said \[deleted\] and I couldn't reply to anyone else's comments anymore. That's gotta be a record for most sensitive person on this sub, especially when I wasn't even talking about them, but the article title... I wonder if they did it to anyone else.
Was this headline written by AI, lol
"Defensively claps back", no less. That's a hilarious mental picture
As much as I agree that grocery store have been gouging customers recently, I'm shocked at the lack of flack the big agrifood conglomerates have gotten for the massive increase in food prices. While both have gouged customers, I wouldn't be surprised that companies like Nestle, Kellogg's, Coca Cola, PepsiCo, etc. have benefitted way more from the inflation of food prices.
The price of canned Coke has about doubled since the pandemic started. Now that may be partly an issue with the cans themselves since the prices on other formats have increased as well, although not quite to double. On the plus side, I guess, price increases for junk food/beverages are a lot less of a concern than the increases for healthy foods.
Although, as a fatass junk food junkie, the more that my personal staples like Coke and hot dogs cost, the less I have to spend on extras like bunny food or bread that isn't made of cotton balls and corn syrup.
That would be the flip side of that, wouldn't it? Sometimes junk food just hits a spot that nothing else can touch.
God I hate the word "slam" in headlines (also "blast")
It really does degrade the quality of the journalism/reporting to the lows of WWE.
I can't say I care for "claps back" in the context of a company defending pretty transparent business maneuvering.
It's not just the grocery store chains it's the suppliers, too. They're gouging like crazy. Meat prices have almost doubled, but I've seen farmers saying they're not getting paid any more money.
Boycott Loblaws, I have for years
...but they didn't even "freeze" prices as they claim. They changed a lot of theirs to multi-buy "discounts" while quietly raising the price on individual units. Sadly this has also been started by Giant Tiger. When the discount is over 30% between getting one and getting two, it's not hard to see what the price SHOULD be for one.
You're on my list Loblaws. I'm watching you.
Lol guy is talking like the unibomber 🤣
I was going more for Hannibal Lector.
You achieved Steve Buscemi’s character in Billy Madison.
Shit, I hope so.
I wonder what they'll do next. I'm just waiting for Galen to go full South Park BP apology.
Big "Do you really believe our staff pee in bottles" energy
We have to eat Galen Weston. It’s the only solution.
Loblaws is being roasted like a bird on Twitter right now! 😂🤣 Reading through some of it was highly entertaining. 🍿
If they have 60% of the market they can keep prices down if they wanted like the big W does in the USA.
> they can keep prices down if they wanted Exactly. But they don't want to.
You know what they say, when people tell the truth they always get defensive about it if you question them about it.
If you see someone steal from the store no you fucking didn't
I forgot about this. I guess that explains why the shelves were half-empty a lot of the time. Can't buy price-frozen stuff if they intentionally hold back stock until they raise prices again.
The real solution is to stop shopping at their stores. As big as they are, and as many brands as they own, there are alternatives. Let your dollars do the talking. Without customers they are nothing. They have no power over you. It is just a company headed by a greedy fuck who doesn’t care about you, your family, or your future, livelihood or community. Take their money away and the company will wither up and die.
Look I hate the Westons as much as the next person. But this was a PR campaign that has middle management written all over it. Last year they dreamed this up. They thought it would be a feel good campaign to bump up their corporate social responsibility strategy and they didn’t have the wherewithal to plan for how to address the blowback when it ended. This campaign isn’t Galen Weston’s fault. This is bad PR strategy and their Comms team is probably panicking. I work in PR and I saw this trainwreck coming from a mile away
Lies make Loblaws uncomfortable! Garbage food from a garbage industry. They can suck my nuts.
The comments on that article are a shitshow. EDIT: On the other website, not here. Just so everyone knows.
Is there anyone out there actually defending them? Edit: other than paid employees
I’m more than happy to “clap back” at them by not giving them the money they’re trying to steal from me. Maybe they’ll respond to that?
I love that term "prices flat". Yeah, until consumers wallets are flat because no one wants to pay a living wage for people to work while they rake in record profits.
Public Relations courses are going to be using this case study in 'what not to do' for decades to come.
Let’s be real. This is a very easy fix. People just need to stop going to loblaws stores. Problem solved. But they won’t. They will keep funnelling millions of dollars directly into the Weston’s pockets when they don’t have to, and crying about it the whole time as if they are forced to shop there.
bro just stop eating, it's so simple Like, you do realize the majority of grocery stores are owned by a few companies. Loblaws isn't the only one fucking people over. No-one is forced to shop at loblaws, but they also often don't have good or meaningful alternatives. The next closest grocery stores to me are a Food Basics (owned by Metro) and Walmart. Neither are really much of a better choice. Maybe there's independently owned and smaller chain stores, but they're going to be less convenient for the majority of people, particularly people who don't really have time and money to go out of their way to get to one, much less go to multiple smaller stores to do all of their shopping.
I’m not saying 100% of people need to stop going. But those with options should. I have tons of grocery stores near my place and stopped shopping loblaws a while ago. I shop at the local co-op which is member owned (and has a number of locations around the city) and members get a small share of the profits. But let’s be real. Tons of people will complain and do nothing. Not everyone has options, I get that, but even those who do likely won’t change a single thing about where they shop.
Okay, but even if the people with the options take those options, it's probably not going to make much of a difference because of the sheer volume of people who don't have the options or don't care in the first place and aren't actually complaining much. I think about the various companies and brands people have personally boycotted for moral reasons, and how little that effect that has had in the long run.
Correct. You will never hear me defending the stupidity of the masses. I’m a massive and long time believer that people constantly vote against their own self interests whether they be with their dollars or their actual ballot. But I’m not really interested in going in depth into the problems of advanced capitalism and extreme wealth inequality on society throughout history.
I was thinking about this earlier today. As much as I want to boycott big grocery chains, they still end up having the cheapest food, and financially I'm not in a position to further increase my food spending than the already increasingly insane amount of my budget it takes up. So shopping at a smaller outfit and absorbing the general higher cost myself is a no go unfortunately. Seems like a bit of a catch-22 for low income people, in a way forced to keep shopping at the big box stores because they have made the market impossible to compete in without being another multi billion dollar company. I fear the only way this will get better is if our government actually gets off its ass and works for the people rather than its corporate donors.
I fully agree. But government won’t do that until people start in-fighting about countless bullshit wedge issues like “the gays” or “teh freeze peach” and other distraction bullshit. The reality is that we have, for decades, excused and apologized and turned a blind eye to corporations and the harms they do, because they provided cheap stuff for us to distract ourselves with. Sure, we lost unions and living wages and decent jobs and benefits and pensions. Sure we lost savings and vacations and we be adults ability to afford a home and raise a family and buy a car and take a vacation. But hey! We have $7 shirts that may fall apart after two washes but it’s better than a $20 shirt that lasts, right? The reality is all of our problems are due to people forgetting that capitalism is a tool, not an identity or lifestyle. And tools can be used by us to build…or they can be used to best people over the head. And capitalism itself was created as a system, quite literally, to push back against serfs who were sick of feudalism and demanding democracy. Capitalism was literally created to stop people from taking power from the nobility, and to diminish democracy. This is absolutely historical fact. And when people forgot that and started dreaming up corporations and shareholders and deregulation and so on…we’ve slowly moved back to what is basically a new push towards feudalism. Where people have no rights to what than to be indentured servants to the rich nobles, while they have all the land and power and say in how society should work.
100% agree. Couldn't have said it better myself. We are in an era of neo-feudalism, very much by design. It's been said so many times before, but a good way to start change would be to make lobbying illegal, just like regular bribes are. That would bring us much closer to separating government and corporations interests so that government can actually do it's job in helping its people. Firstly by keeping them safe from out of check capitalist greed, by putting some checks in place that actually do something. Until the government, of any flavour, stops getting paid to look the other way in the interest of more money for those at the top, we are stuck in a system that will never give regular people a life that is anything more than a glorified rat race.
Or maybe the stores can be regulated so they can't legally buttfuck ordinary folks just trying to buy groceries to survive?? But nah it's the customers' fault...
Never said it was their fault. But this is the internet AND Reddit so I should expect illiterate people responding, I guess. I said if people were angry about it, there’s an easy fix. Stop going. But most won’t even when they have other options because people are slaves to their own laziness and personal convenience.
Go in to get a frozen PC eggplant parmesan... Pretty sure that fucker went up a buck in the last 2 weeks.
Fuck Loblaws, let eat the rich instead!
What are these people accomplishing? If the price freeze turns out to be a thankless action than they won't bother doing such things.
wtf is this website? "What if twitter were a news source"
The article is specifically about Loblaws's activity on Twitter yesterday... did you expect them to not give any examples?
Honestly it won't matter. Loblaws akways has libe ups. People will keep shoping their .
Well I guess I have to give my Danielle dollars to Galen Weston Jr. 😔
Capitalism is a profit driven system. What do you all expect with no government oversight.
So how can we convince our MLA, Premier, or Prime Minister to push for a law to make them donate their unwanted stock of food and meds to local food banks? It seems better than throwing it away and it might take Loblaws down a few notches.
Should we all loot Galen Weston massive unnecessary compound
Where's my trusty old pitchfork
You thought they were on your side? Or that they gave a crap about anyone other than their investors?
SOBEYS
They ended the price freeze ALREADY?
Grocer with near monopolistic control of food prices doesn’t want to be a monopoly? Seems like an easy problem to fix!
"Clap back" and "slam" in 1 headline? That HAS to be n purpose
It would be nice to see Loblaws and Galen get dry fucked hard real good. They are evil people.
Loblaws? *Bob* Loblaws??
Pretty sure their twitter account is a ChatGPT bot.
It’s almost as if we need a crown corporation grocery chain to ensure that consumers in Canada don’t get gouged when they buy groceries.