April Inata, Local 1000A

Loblaws
Mississauga, Ontario

There’s significant union history in April Inata’s family, but she didn’t know it until after she took up her own activism.
Her grandfather helped organize a union in a Nova Scotia coal mine, she says, but she discovered that only when sorting through papers after a death in the family.
“I was surprised, and I thought, way to go Grandfather,” she says. “It made me proud.”
Inata grew up in Toronto, where she had several non-union jobs in retail and hospitality before she started at Loblaws in 1989. She’s been there ever since.
“I didn’t think of it at all like a union job. I just thought of it as a regular store,” she explains, but she sees it differently now, and she takes every opportunity available to talk about it with others.
Those opportunities are many, since Inata holds many leadership positions within UFCW Local 1000A. She’s approachable, so the talking comes easily.
“I make it my business when we have a new hire in the store to go and talk to them, let them know I’m a steward, and if they have any questions or problems to come to me,” she says. “You could say people connect to me. I’ll be walking down the street and people just come up and start talking to me.”
She’s a great person to go to with all kinds of questions. She takes as many union training courses as she can, is the certified labour representative on the workplace Joint Health and Safety Committee, and a part-time representative in the union’s Toronto Division. She chairs the Women’s Issues Network for Central West Ontario and she makes the rounds through Loblaws stores with the union’s membership booth, a sort of union road show that brings union information and representatives into the stores for three days at a time.
Inata doesn’t just sit at the booth. She makes the rounds through the stores to let people know she’s there, and invites them to drop by the booth on a break for more conversation, information, and answers to their questions.
Local 1000A staff representative Rehya Yazbek met and became friends with Inata when the two worked at a Mississauga Loblaws store. When Yazbek arrived there in 2003, she was already a seasoned activist and divisional officer who had co-chaired Joint Health and Safety Committees (JHSC) in other stores. She was “pleasantly surprised” when she attended the first JHSC meeting in her new store.
“The worker co-chair (Inata) was this part-timer, who wasn’t really involved in the union, but she had this passion, and the committee was functioning really well,” says Yazbek.
“She was like a sponge,” Yazbek says. “She kept asking for more and more, and always wanted to know what she could help with.  
“I’ve always found her to be a go-to person when you need something done. And she’s really good at rallying people together in the stores.”
Inata’s heart and energy are apparent in her words as well as her actions.
She and her husband, Gary, have two grown children, and between home, Loblaws job, union work, and volunteering at a charity bingo, she packs a lot into her day. As much as she likes to be busy, she’s also very clear about what she wants to do when life slows down.
“When I retire, I want to see the world. That’s my dream – to go to Egypt, and Africa.”
Her day-to-day life and her dream seem to dovetail in her philosophy, which rings with clarity and homespun wisdom.
“There’s one thing I believe, and that’s to never sit back in a rocking chair when you’re 80 and say, why didn’t I do it?”