Dari Chan, local 500

Metro
Montreal, Quebec

Dari was born in Cambodia and arrived in Quebec in 1975. Her first job in Quebec was in retail food as a cashier at Steinberg in 1980. Then the store closed and her manager suggested she apply to Metro where she obtained a cashier position. Since October 2008 she has been in charge of price checks and changes which is a full-time position.

She attended her first union meeting during the negotiation of the collective agreement in December 2008 and decided to apply to be on the negotiating team. Until recently Dari knew very little about her union. She had perused her agreement without paying too much attention. She was busy with her husband and two daughters. But now that her girls are older she has more time to be involved in other things. She therefore also decided to apply for a vacant assistant-steward position.

Dari likes to help others. In order to be able to help others she had to read her agreement more carefully. She also took a steward course and realized that she had a lot more rights than she thought.

It makes her very proud when her coworkers come to ask her questions. A lot of the women in her store are not from Quebec and some don’t even speak French. They are afraid to become involved in the union because they don’t know enough about it or are too shy. But she believes that by explaining these people’s rights to them she might succeed in convincing them to become a little more involved in union life. What’s more, her involvement with the union makes her communicate a lot more with her coworkers and she has come to know them. She is more confident and doesn’t hesitate to challenge her employer’s decisions when they are in conflict with the agreement.

For Dari, the union’s place will always be important in order to continue to fight injustice and protect the workers.