Residents across the Greater Toronto Area hoping to get groceries at closed Metro stores faced picket lines on Saturday, as thousands of staff officially struck at 27 locations throughout the region.

About 3,700 members of Unifor Local 414 walked off the job just after midnight, effectively shutting down operations at the stores where they worked, and picket lines were up at the affected sites by 8 a.m., while stores staffed by unaffected workers continued to operate as usual.

At one Metro store in East Toronto, striking workers sheltered from heavy rain while demanding fair wages and chanting "United We Stand," as passing drivers honked their horns.

Both federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Unifor National President Lana Payne were present to support the picketers after workers rejected a collective bargaining agreement reached last week.

Unifor had supported the deal when it was first proposed and Payne described it on Saturday as "the best deal in decades," but she stated it was still insufficient to address what she termed the declining working conditions across the national grocery sector.

Payne said at a morning press conference, "We are living in a time where workers, especially grocery workers, are not able to cover their expenses. We have seen erosion of jobs in grocery stores across the country over the last two decades."

Payne added, "Grocery jobs that were once considered stable sources of household income have largely turned into part-time roles that are insufficient to deal with the rising cost of living today, noting that 70% of jobs at Metro are now part-time, emphasizing that the situation is worse in other leading grocery stores."

Payne also pointed to rising profits and CEO compensation at grocery giants, stating that workers making an average of $16-17 an hour want a larger share of the profits they helped to achieve.

Singh told reporters after briefly joining the striking workers on the picket line, "This company is not facing any difficulties; this company is making huge profits."

Grocery chain heads have faced increasing scrutiny amid soaring food prices and told a parliamentary committee in March that rising prices were not due to profit boosting and that their margins on food sales remained low.

Data from last month’s inflation report from Statistics Canada shows that grocery prices rose by 9.1% year-over-year even as prices in other sectors fell.

Samantha Henry, a food writer who worked at Metro for 10 years, said, "The rising grocery prices were part of what drove the workers to reject the latest contract offer."

The 36-year-old mother of three, who was on the local bargaining committee, added that workers had given the union a 100% strike mandate before negotiations began, and added that workers were also driven by a sense that their efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, when they stayed on the job to provide essential service, were not appreciated.

Henry continued, "Surviving is almost impossible these days," pointing to the rising costs of rent and groceries that most cannot keep up with, emphasizing that it’s tough when you have three kids and work in retail, you have to budget your money and make sure you know what’s going on every week."

Iman Chaudhry, 22, has spent the last four years working as a cashier at Metro while completing her university studies in human resources, and said her years with the company have not led to any improvements in her benefits, and neither she nor her three family members, all earning minimum wage, have enough to get by.

She added, "Putting all this money together doesn’t make enough to live on, we’ve been living paycheck to paycheck for the longest time, rent is high and buying groceries is extremely costly for many people."

Metro Ontario, a subsidiary of Metro Inc., issued a statement on Friday saying it was "very disappointed" that the strike was moving forward despite Unifor's support for the proposed deal.

The company had been negotiating with the union over the past few weeks and reached a fair and equitable agreement that meets the needs of our employees and customers while ensuring that Metro remains competitive. The settlement offered significant wage increases for employees over all four years of the agreement, along with improvements to pensions and benefits for all employees, including part-timers.

Metro Ontario stated that the 27 affected stores will close for the duration of the strike, but pharmacies will remain open, and the impacted stores include locations in Toronto and its suburbs, Brantford, Orangeville, Milton, Oakville, Brampton, and Mississauga.