Sobeys closing 5 Safeway, IGA stores in Manitoba, 300 workers affected

WINNIPEG – Employees at five Manitoba grocery stores and a warehouse have been told their workplaces are closing.

The Winnipeg Safeway stores on Ness Avenue at Sturgeon and in Garden City Mall on Leila Avenue near McPhillips Street and the IGA on Jefferson Avenue in the Maples are closing, Jeff Traeger, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 832, told Global News. Safeways at the Brandon Shoppers Mall and in Steinbach are also closing, as is a small warehouse in Thompson.

Sobeys will lay off 300 union workers as part of the closures, some of whom have bumping rights, Traeger said.

The Thompson warehouse is scheduled to close on July 15, while employees at the five stores were told their locations will close in six to eight weeks.

Sobeys announced in an earnings release Thursday that it would be closing about 50 stores across the country, the majority of them in Western Canada, where the 30 stores slated to be shuttered are mostly underperforming Safeway stores.

Nova Scotia-based Sobeys bought Canada Safeway for $5.8 billion last summer and said the closures “logically follow the acquisition.”

READ MORE: Sobeys pulls plug on ‘underperforming’ Safeway supermarkets