This Exel Logistics bears watching and maybe some more digging into. It seems when you get to the corporate offices of these robber barons, the same old faces keep showing up. Maybe we should be calling Patrick Kinsella Premier, since he seems to be behind the whole corrupt regime.

In the mid-90s a company called Tibbett And Britten supposedly bought the warehousing business of Safeway. We went home on a Friday working for MacDonalds Consolidated on a Friday only to return on the Monday to be told we were now employed by Summit Logistics, a subsidiary of Tibbett And Britten. A few years later we were notified that Tibbett And Britten had been absorbed by Exel Logistics. The reason I say that the warehousing was supposedly sold is the fact that Safeway still dictated pretty much everything that the warehousing complex did from how food products would be handled, to maintenance of the facility, etc. Safeway also still owned the property upon which the warehousing complex resided.

Fast forward to late August 9,2010 when all the employees at the now named Summit Logistics were informed that the warehousing complex in Burnaby would be closed down, which occured on February 28,2011. Safeway supposedly did not renew their contract with Summit Logistics and instead signed on with a company called Cold Logic Corp. I was not able to find out whether this company has any ties with Exel or Safeway, but can tell you that 391 employees and management lost good paying jobs with this maneuver. Although I had retired the year before this closure was announced, I heard from some of my former co-workers that Cold Logic had offered them jobs at about one-half the rate they were making and minimal benefits.

My advice to the current employees, and union representing them, at the LDB is to watch their backs. Our union fought as hard as they could trying to prove that Safeway never really sold the business through the Labour Relations Board, but just couldn’t convince them of such. Will history repeat itself?

Good Day