According to Mostafa Henaway, an IWC organizer, “many people view Dollarama as a sort of ‘mom-and-pop’ operation, that it’s simply a dollar store.” Yet he pointed out that “it is actually one of the largest corporations in Quebec and Canada, [which] employs at least 20,000 workers and operates over 1200 stores from coast to coast”, and has also begun to expand into Central America. He added that its owners, the Rossy family, are worth $2.5 billion, making them one of the richest families in Quebec and in Canada. 

Immigrant Workers Centre weekly distribution of supplies and leaflets outside the Dollarama warehouse in Montreal.

Photo by Thomas Boucher.

“Dollarama is our Amazon”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “Dollarama is able to maintain low prices across the board because of the conditions workers face in its distribution centers and in its stores, only to ensure that Dollarama continues to reap in large profits.” Henaway insists that in the Canadian context, “Dollarama needs to be a focus for us, in the same way that Amazon is a focus for the labour movement around the world. We’re making the argument that Dollarama is our Amazon.” 

Joey Calugay, another member of the IWC, also spoke at the press conference. Calugay explained that many of the workers in Montreal’s warehouses are newly arrived immigrants or asylum seekers, older immigrants who are supplementing their income, or undocumented workers who’ve lost their status and are trying to re-establish their legal right to stay in Montreal. According to the Montreal Gazette, immigrants made up to eighty per cent of warehouse workers in the Montreal metropolitan area in 2019.

Mohammed Barry is a Guinean refugee who has been active in the campaign to prevent Canada’s deportation of exiled Guineans to a dangerous fate in their home country, in addition to his labour organizing. In the same press conference, he stated that he worked at Dollarama for two weeks, in “deplorable” conditions. “There is no respect [for the workers]” he said, “and the contamination of the air [with Covid-19 in the warehouses] is enough to traumatize employees.” In his time at Dollarama, he claims he experienced large numbers of workers that were packed together in such close proximity that it was impossible to maintain any kind of social distancing.

In addition to a lack of Covid-19 measures, Barry added that there was no adequate training provided to new employees in order for them to carry out their work safely. Instead, he said, workers are given rapid, minimal training, and are made to work as fast as possible. When Barry was injured at work, he recounts that his manager simply instructed him to wipe the wound and get back to work. Only when Barry threatened to call the police did the management treat his wound and allow him to go to the hospital himself. As for calling an ambulance, he noted that the unspoken rule was that “anyone who tries to call one to the warehouse would be fired.” 

Another former Dollarama employee, Gaurav Sharma, is an artist from Chandigarh, India, who came to Montreal in 2019 and is awaiting a decision on his refugee status claim. Hired by Di-Geo International, a temporary employment agency, he was assigned to Dollarama for almost a year as a palette builder. The long hours – at least 8 hours a day, including a half hour lunch break and a 15 minute bathroom break – and the quick pace of the physically strenuous work eventually resulted in severe back pain for Sharma. When the first instances of searing pain hit him, Sharma recalled, the warehouse had “no medical staff, no first aid kit and no painkillers available”, so he had to find a doctor himself, and was prescribed 2 weeks of bed-rest. When he asked to be reassigned to a less physically strenuous task due to his injury, Shamra said, the employment agency insisted that “no transfer was possible,” leading Sharma to quit in order to avoid aggravating his injury.

In 2019, the IWC published a report based on group interviews and surveys with 50 workers in Montreal warehouses and distribution centres, including Dollarama facilities. The report decried “a business model within the logistics sector that is based on the hyper-exploitation of a work force largely composed of migrants.” It found that nearly a quarter of warehouse workers throughout Montreal have suffered injuries at work. The majority of these workers are given zero sick days, and nearly 40 per cent received no health and safety training at work, according to the same report. It also states that “almost 60 per cent of workers said they were paid less than a permanent worker doing the same job. 10 per cent were paid under minimum wage, 16.5 per cent worked more than full time, and almost half said they did not have proper safety equipment or sufficient training.”

Mohammed Barry, campaigner for Guinean refugee rights and former Dollarama worker.

Photo by Philippe Teixeira St-Cyr.

The role of temporary placement agencies 

Former warehouse workers like Barry argue that temporary placement agencies aggravate many of the issues within this system – they act as the official employers of many warehouse workers, thus allowing Dollarama to avoid providing them with proper benefits or protection. According to Jon Milton writing for Ricochet, “such an arrangement makes for extremely high turnover, and makes organizing into unions nearly impossible from a legal standpoint.” Henaway emphasizes that “90 per cent of people [that] work through agencies, it’s their first job in Quebec, they’re refugee claimants or failed refugee claimants that could be deported, all of that stress makes it difficult to organize.” 

According to labour organizers like Henaway, this lack of labour protections has not only devastated Dollarama workers’ health and safety, but also their freedom to protest for better conditions. In the beginning of the summer, Henaway said that “workers were fired for speaking up against the conditions in the Dollarama warehouse,” or even for signalling that there were Covid-19 outbreaks inside the warehouse.

Former warehouse worker Gaurav Sharma performs a short play about his Dollarama experience at a protest in August.

Photo by Thomas Boucher.

Workers fight back

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the IWC and its allies have been holding press conferences and demonstrations, as well as flyering, to demand adequate health protections for warehouse workers, and the maintenance of bonuses for all workers who are considered “essential service providers” in the context of Covid-19 shutdowns. In May, 135 local Montreal artists signed an open letter in support of the IWC’s campaign. According to Stefan Christoff, an artist and activist speaking to the Daily, “DJs have made mixes to draw attention to the struggle, while some visual artists have created prints, that are now up in the city to draw attention to the issue.” Christoff and other activists have also supported the effort by attending the IWC’s weekly outreach sessions near Dollarama warehouses, in order to “distribute masks, water, juice and share flyers that detail labour rights” to warehouse workers on their way to work.

Through a combination of physical rallies, press conferences and media coverage, workers and labor organizers have so far succeeded in their efforts to pressure Dollarama into maintaining hazard pay for all its employees. In March, store workers were given 10 per cent wage increases, and warehouse workers had seen their wages increased by up to $3 per hour. With the second wave of COVID-19 looming in the fall, the company had announced it was cutting the bonus pay at the end of August. Workers swiftly reacted by organizing a rally on August 20 near Dollarama’s main warehouse, which included speakers from trade unions, community groups and elected politicians as well as Dollarama workers. A week later, the Immigrant Workers Center announced: “Multi-million dollar giant Dollarama has stepped back from its previous position to restore bonuses for workers providing essential services in its distribution centers and stores.” In their statement, they congratulated the efforts of Dollarama employees, praising the fact that they “were able to push back the company’s plan to end risk premiums”.

Although the now reinstated bonuses of $1.50 are lower than the $3 bonuses warehouse workers previously received in March, the IWC’s Facebook statement claimed that this modest increase “brings their hourly wages closer to the $15-per-hour minimum wage that workers in Quebec are fighting for.” What’s more, these bonuses are scheduled to remain effective until November.

This Saturday, October 31, the IWC, Howl Arts and the Association des travailleurs/euses temporaires d’agences de placement (ATTAP) will be hosting a protest in solidarity with the continued struggle of Montreal’s temporary workers. In addition to demanding the continuation of hazard pay after November 1 and permanent employment for Dollarama workers, the rally’s organizers say it will address “the limited regularization program” put forward by the federal and Quebec governments regarding immigrant workers, which “excludes the vast majority of people who continue to do essential work, and also deserve status.”

The protest, Manif de solidarité avec les travailleur.euse.s de l’entrepôt Dollarama, will be held this Saturday October 31, from 1:00p.m. to 3:00p.m. 

Location: Next to Dollarama store, 7017 St Hubert street-South of Jean-Talon (Jean-Talon metro)

The post Dollarama’s Immigrant Workers Fight for their Rights appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The Report of the Service Review Committee

The SRC is under the portfolio of the SSMU Vice-President for Student Life, and meets throughout the year to review Services, Service constitutions, and new Service applications. At the end of each academic year, the SRC publishes a comprehensive report on each Service’s performance, which includes a ‘Pass,’ ‘Pass with reservations,’ or ‘Fail’ grade. According to Noah Merali, the Services Representative to SSMU Legislative Council and member of the SRC, “the report of the Services Review Committee is the result of a year-long investigation consisting of a direct audit by committee members, an examination of each service’s budget and constitution, a survey that was sent to all SSMU members and consultations with each Service’s executive teams.”

“Services like ASN,” they explained, “were evaluated on accessibility, mandate fulfillment, and advocacy.”

Last year, the SRC’s 2019 report granted the ASN a grade of “Pass with Reservations,” due to the ASN’s “low focus on advocacy.” Last week, the SRC’s 2020 report gave the Service a “Fail” grade, with the following explanations and recommendations:

• “The Committee found that [the ASN] failed to address last year’s recommendation, for which they received a Pass with Reservations, to focus more on advocacy.”
• “The Services Review Committee found that the service had failed their second mandate: ‘adequate resources, support and awareness derived from the heritage of the Arab world, for the demand of the student body.’ Furthermore, they violate the Internal Regulations of Student Groups (7.1 c) ‘the provision of resources and/or support must be available free of charge to Members,’ by charging $5 for entry to ArabFest.”
• “ASN must create a concrete plan of their services to the SSMU membership, notably working on advocacy, services that are beyond events, and offering further resources and support that is accessible throughout the semester. A good example for ASN to follow would be the BSN. ASN should work on creating space for Arab students to talk and educate the community through panels, workshops and creating in-house support programs. There is too much reliance on outside organizations, as the ASN only funnels candidates to these organizations and does not offer programs themselves.”
• “If these concerns are not addressed to the satisfaction of the Services Review Committee within one academic month (end of September), we recommend for the service to be reverted to a full status club.”

Response of the ASN President

When asked to comment on the SRC’s report, ASN President Karim Atassi claimed that “external factors” had prevented the ASN from fulfilling its obligations in the last two years. In explaining why the ASN’s only event of the semester, ArabFest, was not free-of-charge for students, he revealed that more than $10,000 had been spent on the event.

“ArabFest is an extremely expensive event,” he wrote in an email to the Daily’s reporter. Per Atassi, four sets of professional performances cost more than $1500 each, while catering cost around $2000. “When you think about […] the cost of having a calligraphist, a henna artist, booking the venue, the cost of a photographer and a videographer, as well as any extra costs of decorative material and furniture used in the event, you can quickly count that the event cost us more than the $10,000 we have for the winter semester,” Atassi stated.

“Saving funds to step back on the quality of the event is not something that we should do,” he added. The $5 fee per ticket, which amounted to around $1000 in ticket sales after Eventbrite fees, Atassi explained, was to “minimize the gap between the cost of ArabFest and the $10,000 budget,” and prevent leaving deficits for future executives..

Atassi claims that the ASN was unaware they had broken the Internal Regulations for the past two years. “We were told by a SSMU executive that putting a $5 fee would not be a problem. Taking him at his word, we never thought that we were breaking an Internal Regulation.”. He added, “if we knew so, we would have just made the event free.”

The ASN president has refused to disclose the name or position of the “SSMU executive” in question. He also did not respond to the question of whether or not the ASN executives had considered less expensive options for ArabFest, such as hiring students as performers or photographers, instead of paying high costs for professionals.

Comments from Noah Merali

In response to the ASN president’s justifications, Noah Merali of the SRC emphasized that “it is the responsibility of Service executives to know the internal regulations of Services. It is also the responsibility of each Service to budget accordingly and explore avenues within the SSMU if there are any issues […] The major issue the SRC highlighted in our report was the lack of ongoing services outside of large events.”

They added, “the Services Review Committee recognizes the work that the ASN has done in their time as a Service and we recognize the value that an organization like the ASN can have for Arab students on campus.” Though they told the Daily they couldn’t necessarily speak to the ASN’s networking abilities, Merali affirmed that, “as the SRC concluded, the ASN should be doing more in terms of advocacy and education.”

Next steps

Speaking to the upcoming year, Merali advised that the SCR’s recommendations should be “[taken] to heart” by incoming executives. “They should listen to the feedback they’re getting from both the SRC and the student body. They should be aware of the resources they have and the examples they can learn from.”

In order for ASN to keep its Service status, Merali stated that the organization has until the end of September to “develop a plan that incorporates the SRC’s suggestions and shifts them towards advocacy and service.” The incoming ASN executives, who will be elected on April 11, will therefore have to make comprehensive reforms in order to prevent the ASN from losing its status as a SSMU Service.

The post McGill Arab Student Network Fails Service Review appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In 2018, the former McGill Arab Student Association attained the status of a SSMU Service, and was rebranded as the McGill Arab Student Network (ASN). Since Winter 2019, it has also benefited from a $0.50 opt-outable fee, paid by McGill students each semester. In order to achieve this status, the ASN agreed to a number of specific obligations. According to SSMU’s Internal Regulation of Student Groups, a Service’s mandate “must not include the provision of services otherwise provided by the Society.” Its mandate “must be to provide resources and/or support to Members. Services may also provide referral, awareness, education, or advocacy services in addition to their provision of resources and/or support.” Finally, “the provision of resources and/or support must be available free of charge to Members.” 

Yet things have not gone entirely according to plan for the new Service, led by its founder and (unelected) president, Karim Atassi. In February 2018, The McGill Daily sharply criticized the ASN’s “non-political and secular” mandate, arguing that such language merely served “as a cover for the association to promote a whitewashed, ‘palatable’ Arab culture.” Nicholas Raffoul, a former ASN committee member, also condemned its executive team for “encouraging the appropriation and whitewashing of Arab culture to conform to superficial desires of popular culture like music, partying, and food.” He stressed that, “instead of hosting parties and offering discounts to restaurants, the ASN should facilitate resources for Arab students who, like myself, experience intense marginalization on and off campus.”

In addition, it remains unclear how exactly the ASN’s approximate yearly budget of $20,000 is being spent. Other than discounts on shawarma, a networking event, and the annual ArabFest party featuring belly dancers and a mock Levantine wedding, it’s unclear where all that student cash is going, especially given the five dollar fee that all students are obliged to pay if they wish to access ArabFest, the ASN’s annual party featuring the “enriched culture of the Arab world.” This $5 fee for a ticket into ASN’s biggest annual event (and there aren’t many other events) has remained in force since ASN achieved Service status in 2018, despite SSMU’s Internal Regulations of Student Groups stating that “the provision of resources and/or support must be available free of charge to Members” of any Service. 

Nicholas Raffoul, a former ASN committee member, also condemned its executive team for “encouraging the appropriation and whitewashing of Arab culture to conform to superficial desires of popular culture like music, partying, and food.” He stressed that, “instead of hosting parties and offering discounts to restaurants, the ASN should facilitate resources for Arab students who, like myself, experience intense marginalization on and off campus.”

In October 2018, the ASN provoked more controversy on campus by inviting Nuseir Yassin, better known by his Facebook name Nas Daily, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and video-blogger who has been widely criticized for trivializing or dismissing the decades-long oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli state. After Students in Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill (SPHR) expressed their opposition to the event, ASN President Karim Atassi personally messaged the SPHR Facebook page with a rather threatening message: “Just to extend my safety, a notice that there will be police team present in the event. It would be sad to have people arrested for any inappropriate actions. Do please extend this to whoever.” This exact message was shared with the author by SPHR.

In an interview with The McGill Daily the following month, Atassi tried to deny his use of threatening language against SPHR and other students who opposed the Nas Daily event, while also categorizing “Free Palestine” as a “slur.”  When asked about how the ASN would seek to deal with anti-Arab racism or violence on campus, Atassi merely stated that the ASN would “make sure to further promote the secular aspects of the Arab world that everyone would enjoy.” It was hardly an inspiring example of the ASN’s service to Arab students. However, one redeeming feature of the interview was Atassi’s promise to open up the service to genuine democratic participation. Ever since the ASN had become a SSMU service, neither Attassi nor any of the other executives had ever been elected to their positions. In response to criticism about this fact, he stated in the interview that “next year [2019] people will be able to campaign for positions, which will be decided by voting.” 

A General Assembly? That can wait

In March 2019, I asked Atassi when the ASN was going to hold its first General Assembly (GA) and election, as stipulated in the ASN constitution. Atassi informed me that the ASN didn’t really feel ready to hold a GA, so they would simply… not hold it. He went on to explain that the GA would be postponed until Fall 2019, or even Winter 2020, claiming that the delay was due to some ill-defined SSMU bureaucratic technicality.

I eventually asked a SSMU staff member to corroborate this bizarre story. The staff member in question was not amused by the ASN’s unconstitutional antics, to say the least. They therefore promised to send a sternly worded email to the ASN about its electoral obligations. A few days later, the ASN hurriedly informed SSMU that it would hold its first General Assembly on April 10 2019, which would include an election for executive positions.

The first ‘election’

It quickly became clear that the incumbent ASN leadership was not going to allow an election to get in the way of another year in office. First, the ASN ensured that no physical General Assembly would actually take place, with the excuse that there was “no available space.” Instead, the GA would be conducted on the collective group chat of the ASN’s “committees,” which had been inactive all semester, and which contained only 26 people (including all the executives). Second, it was decreed that, Constitution be damned, only committee members would be eligible to run for an executive position, if it was vacant. Third, both available positions were uncontested, with each pre-selected candidate coasting to a predictable landslide victory. Finally, not a single email or Facebook post about the General Assembly would be sent out to the student body, ensuring that almost nobody would ever even know it had happened. When the ASN finally got around to sending out an email, it was to ask students to nominate ASN for the SSMU Service of the Year Award, as well as to nominate its president Karim Atassi for the McGill Equity & Community Building Award. 

It quickly became clear that the incumbent ASN leadership was not going to allow an election to get in the way of another year in office.

Abolishing elections

As comfortable as election victory had been, even a staged democratic process appears to have been a bit too stressful for Atassi and his fellow executives. By the end of 2019, they had apparently decided that enough was enough. Having failed to cancel their first General Assembly, the ASN executive team were going to make sure there would be no second. 

In the early months of 2020, one student interested in running for an executive position emailed ASN asking for information about the next General Assembly. ASN responded that it had changed its constitution and abolished its General Assembly and elections with SSMU approval, with the justification that, “it was recommended to us to remove it because it doesn’t fit the structure of a service.” When the student in question asked to see the new constitution, they received no reply. Another student who asked a similar question by email told me they were simply ignored. 

ASN responded that it had changed its constitution and abolished its General Assembly and elections with SSMU approval, with the justification that, “it was recommended to us to remove it because it doesn’t fit the structure of a service.” When the student in question asked to see the new constitution, they received no reply.

I therefore asked Billy Kawasaki, the SSMU Vice-President of Student Life, to comment on the ASN’s assertion. He stated: “The abolition of the GA was not ‘recommended by the SSMU’ as this is a constitutional requirement that we require of all services. So of course, we would not recommend to abolish something that we ask all services to do. (i.e. having a GA is a constitutional requirement). I do not know what ‘doesn’t fit the structure of a service’ means since all services have GAs and no service is exempt from this. ASN is not an exception. There are many different types of services such as volunteer, collective, security, referral, etc so there’s diverse structures under the SSMU but they all hold GAs.”

Time for change

For the past two years, the Arab Student Network led by Karim Atassi has dismissed criticism concerning its mandate, its behaviour, and its unwillingness to actually address the concrete needs of Arab students. In one case, its president even used the threat of police as a means to silence his critics. The ASN has also made its constituents pay for access to services which are supposed to be free of charge, in violation of SSMU regulations concerning Services. Most concerning of all, the ASN executive has repeatedly attempted to delay, manipulate, or abolish its internal democratic process, in violation of its own Constitution and of its obligations as a SSMU Service. 

At present, one hopes that the SSMU will finally pressure the Arab Student Network to respect its constitution and hold free and fair elections for its executive positions, in addition to its constitutionally-mandated General Assembly. This would finally open up the organization to genuine democratic participation. It’s about time. For the past two years, the ASN has received funding from the entire student body and claimed to serve all McGill students, both Arab and non-Arab, without ever giving any of them a voice or a vote.

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