Metro faces ongoing worker shortage, higher overtime pay to keep grocery stores open.
“There’s a lot of open positions out there and there’s not enough workers to fill them,” Metro president and CEO Eric La Flèche said during a call to discuss the company’s third-quarter results.
He added that Metro currently has “more open positions” than usual but declined to provide an exact number of vacancies across the company’s warehouses and stores, which include conventional supermarkets like Metro and Metro Plus, discount grocery chains Super C in Quebec and Food Basics in Ontario as well as drugstores Jean Coutu and Brunet.
Sales totalled $5.87 billion, up from $5.72 billion, as food same-store sales gained 1.1 per cent and pharmacy same-store sales rose 7.2 per cent. “If this high inflationary, high price environment continues it will continue to put pressure on margin,” Metro chief financial officer François Thibault said.
Canada’s jobless rate stayed at 4.9 per cent in July, the lowest since comparable record-keeping began in 1976, Statistics Canada reported last Friday in its latest labour force survey.Shoppers increasingly opted for discount grocery stores, switched to cheaper house brands and sought out cheaper protein choices.