At the entrance to a branch in eastern Montreal of the Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ), a young security guard kept watch as the Journal.
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To the question “how is it going?” “, he answers :
– Seriously, I’ve been sickened three times in the last hour. »
– By anti-vaccines?
– Not even, vaccinated customers! he says, shrugging his shoulders.
Inside, there were few consumers on the stroke of noon. An SAQ employee asked customers for the vaccine passport.
“The situation makes us very uncomfortable,” he told us.
The newspaper traveled to four branches during this first day of passport implementation. First observation, the measure is far from being accepted by all employees.
“There’s no one who wants to be at the entrance and be disgusted by customers,” an attendant told us.
Employees against the passport
His colleague said he was against imposing passports. “
There are people who are alcoholics. I don’t know how they will react, it’s scary, ”he got carried away.
The union of store and office employees of the SAQ has also expressed concern for the coming weeks.
What will happen when there are a lot of customers on Thursday or Friday evening?
“There is no one who wants to be assigned the task of verifying customers. There is a bit of anxiety and a lack of clear markers. We have the tool, but we are improvising,” said the president of the SEMB-SAQ-CSN employees’ union, Lisa Courtemanche, in an interview with The newspaper.
According to the latter, yesterday afternoon, there had been no “overflows or incidents” during this first day.
Second observation, the ways of doing things differ at each of the branches. In one place, an SAQ employee was cramped in the portico and the security guard was inside.
In another branch, it was the opposite. Then, in the third, the security guard, a sturdy guy over 250 pounds, checked the entrances and checked the documents.
Lack of security guards
The SAQ wanted to have 150 security guards in the busiest branches. Finally, only 135 came for this first day.
“We will be able to provide the number desired by the SAQ and fill the positions very quickly,” said Louis-Antoine Paquin, communications director at Garda.
The employees’ union is calling for a security guard in each of the 400 branches. The state-owned company says it will not hesitate to increase the workforce if there is a need.
“We are in contact with our branch managers and we will not hesitate, depending on the evolution of the situation, to allocate additional resources,” said Yann Langlais Plante, spokesperson for the state-owned company.
Without a hitch in Quebec
In Quebec, the imposition of the passport went off without a hitch in several branches, noted The newspaper.
” It’s going very well. People are nice. We’ve been preparing for a long time,” said an employee of the SAQ Dépôt, on Einstein Street, where there was still a good turnover already at the start of the day.
With his vaccine passport in hand, Claude Ferland was ready to enter the branch of the Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC) on Chemin Sainte-Foy.
“I am comfortable with this measure, if we want to get out of the pandemic. That’s what it takes. The world must be vaccinated. Me, I have my three doses, ”he said.
According to a Léger poll, 67% of Quebecers are in favor of the CAQ government’s measure.
–With the collaboration of Diane Tremblay