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    Canada Goose’s Image Is Challenged by Union Effort

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    Production of the company’s parkas was once fully unionized, but labor organizers say the owners have taken a harder line in recent years.Canada Goose, the luxury jacket maker, has cultivated an image that is not only chic but also socially conscious. It has forged alliances with environmental advocates and talked of its commitment to high labor standards.These efforts have paid off as the company outgrew its roots as a family enterprise and built a worldwide following for its parkas, which can cost over $1,000 and have been worn by celebrities like Daniel Craig and Kate Upton. “We believe that the brand image we have developed has significantly contributed to the success of our business,” the company wrote in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in March.But production employees of Canada Goose, who were all unionized as of 2010, have complained that the company has taken an increasingly hard line toward labor that is at odds with its stated values.Shoppers at a Canada Goose store in New York in 2019. Employees have accused the luxury jacket maker of being anti-union.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesIn 2019, a company official was cited by a provincial labor board for unfair labor practices during a union election at a newer facility, and some employees complain that the company has retaliated against them in recent months for supporting a union.“People have fear,” said Alelie Sanvictores, a worker who has been active in union organizing. “Some people are scared to talk to me.”Canada Goose denies that it is anti-union and that it has retaliated against union supporters. “It is the employees who will decide their path forward, and Canada Goose will support their decision,” the company said in a statement. The company dismissed the official cited for unfair labor practices.On Wednesday, a few dozen labor activists picketed the Boston headquarters of Bain Capital, the private equity firm that owns and controls Canada Goose, hoping to pressure the jacket maker to endorse a union at three plants in Winnipeg.Pro-union demonstrators gathered Wednesday outside the Boston headquarters of Bain Capital, the private equity firm that controls Canada Goose.Philip Keith for The New York TimesThe tensions at Canada Goose appear to illustrate the challenges of seeking rapid growth while maintaining a high-minded reputation that helps sustain a luxury business.An immigrant named Sam Tick founded Canada Goose, then known as Metro Sportswear Ltd., in 1957. Its lone factory, in Toronto, unionized in the mid-1980s.After Mr. Tick’s grandson Dani Reiss took over as chief executive in 2001, he sought to increase worldwide sales of what had largely been a North American operation. Still, he committed to making its parkas in Canada even as much of the country’s apparel industry was moving offshore.“By keeping the majority of our production domestic, we contribute to local job growth and can more easily maintain our high manufacturing and labour standards,” the company wrote in its 2020 sustainability report.But Mr. Reiss has seemed more skeptical of unions than his predecessors at Canada Goose. After the company bought a production facility in Winnipeg in 2011, the union sought a voluntary recognition or a neutrality agreement that would allow workers there to unionize easily.“Dani Reiss said he wasn’t interested in doing that,” said Barry Fowlie, who for roughly a decade has directed the Canada Council of Workers United, the union that represents workers at the company.A company spokeswoman said the union had never asked for voluntary recognition “in any official context.”Bain Capital purchased a majority stake in Canada Goose in 2013 and listed it on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges in 2017.Under Bain’s ownership, the number of unionized workers increased to over 1,000 just before the pandemic, thanks to growth at the original Toronto plant and the addition of two more facilities there. A collective bargaining agreement that predated the new sites makes all Toronto-based production workers part of the union.But facilities in Winnipeg, where the company’s three factories had over 1,000 production workers before the pandemic, are not covered. The growth of the work force there has helped lower the company’s union membership among production workers to about one-third today, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Workers at the Winnipeg plants say many of them make the province’s minimum wage, which is about 12 Canadian dollars per hour (around $9.65), though workers can earn more if they exceed certain production targets. The company said nearly 70 percent of workers were making more than the minimum wage.Canada Goose committed to making its parkas in Canada, even as much of the country’s apparel industry was moving offshore. Mark Blinch/ReutersIn interviews, five workers complained that managers were often abusive toward the largely immigrant work force.One worker, Immanuelle Concepcion, said her supervisor flew into a rage over mistakes in some jackets she appeared to have worked on. “She told me, ‘How dare you allow this to happen? How dare you?’” Ms. Concepcion recalled. “I was shaking. I haven’t experienced humiliation that way.”The Canada Goose spokeswoman said that the company had gotten no reports of “frequent abuse” and that all reports of harassment were investigated.In June, the company disciplined two workers at one of its Winnipeg plants shortly after they had identified themselves as union supporters. One said he had routinely been wearing headphones while working, but was warned and then written up for it — on two consecutive days — only after he went to work wearing a union T-shirt.Until then, said the worker, Trevor Sinclair, “my supervisor never said anything about it.”Canada Goose said that “no employees face disciplinary action due to union organization” and that disciplinary action had been taken against Mr. Sinclair once management became aware of his violation.Nearly 30 percent of Canadian workers are union members, compared with about 11 percent of American workers. Mr. Sinclair said he felt that Canada Goose was essentially importing an American model of fighting unions.“The way they treat us is not how Canadians treat each other,” he said. “Management doesn’t really understand what Canada is about.”Philip Keith contributed reporting. More

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    Ambassador Tai Outlined Biden’s Goal of Worker-Focused Trade Policy

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    The U.S. trade representative called for stronger worker protections in trade policy as the administration looks to curb the negative impact of globalization.Katherine Tai, the United States trade representative, emphasized in a speech on Thursday that America is focused on protecting workers through trade policy and that it would try to push trading partners to lift wages, allow collective bargaining and end forced labor practices.The speech, Ms. Tai’s first significant policy address, highlighted the Biden administration’s goal of re-empowering workers and minimizing the negative effects of globalization, which has encouraged companies to move jobs and factories offshore in search of cheaper labor and materials.Less clear is how the administration will, in practice, accomplish those goals.“For a very long time, our trade policies have been shaped by folks who are used to looking at the macro picture — big economic sectors,” Ms. Tai said in an interview ahead of the speech, which she delivered at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. town hall. “We’ve lost sight of the impact of these policies, the really real and direct impact they can have on regular people’s lives, and on our workers’ livelihoods.”Ms. Tai, who spoke from prepared remarks, portrayed the administration’s push as trying to correct for decades of trade policy that put company profits ahead of workers and helped erode worker power in the United States.“A worker-centered trade policy means addressing the damage that U.S. workers and industries have sustained from competing with trading partners that do not allow workers to exercise their internationally recognized labor rights,” she said. “This includes standing up against worker abuse and promoting and supporting those rights that move us toward dignified work and shared prosperity: the right to organize and to collectively bargain.”Ms. Tai emphasized that the United States is already enforcing worker protections in the new North American trade agreement and trying to curb forced labor in the fishing industry at the World Trade Organization.On Wednesday, the Biden administration made its second request in a month for Mexico to review whether workers at two separate auto facilities were being denied the collective bargaining rights that were agreed to under the terms of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.“These enforcement actions matter,” Ms. Tai said in her speech, noting the aim is to “protect the rights of workers, particularly those in low-wage industries who are vulnerable to exploitation.”Last month, the administration submitted a proposal to the World Trade Organization aimed at curbing “harmful subsidies to fishing activities that may be associated with the use of forced labor, such as illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.”Still, it remains to be seen how — or whether — the United States will effectively push for stronger labor standards outside of North America. Ms. Tai’s speech did not say directly how the administration would try and encourage some of its biggest trading partners, like China, to adjust trade practices.Asked what the plans are for other continents, Ms. Tai said, “In every direction that we have opportunities to formulate trade policies, we see opportunities to bring this worker-centered spirit to our work.”When it comes to China, she suggested that the goal was to work with other countries that have economic structures similar to the United States’, pairing with allies to “put ourselves on stronger competitive footing, to compete for the industries of the future.” More

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    The Dream: International Travel. The Reality: Chaos and Confusion.

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    The world beckons, especially for those who have been vaccinated, but would-be travelers face a difficult moment when travel possibilities are at odds with the facts of a still reeling world.In recent days, a steady stream of promising news has painted a rosy picture of the return of international leisure travel.More than 105 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated. Greece, Iceland and Croatia, among a growing list of countries, are now open to American tourists. Airlines are resuming overseas flights. And perhaps the biggest development of all: Come summer, fully vaccinated Americans will once again be welcome across Europe.But the optimism may be premature. At the moment, the broader reality is more chaotic, and more sobering.A set of swirling crosscurrents — including a surge in global coronavirus cases, lagging vaccine rollouts in tourist hot spots and the lack of a reliable system to verify vaccinations — may be setting the stage for a slow and tortured return to high-volume international travel, despite ambitious pronouncements and the pressures of a tourism industry hoping to avoid another period of economic strain.Reopening areas to vaccinated tourists is a calculated risk, said Dr. Sarah Fortune, the chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “My doomsday scenario,” she said, “is a mixing of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations in a setting where there is high viral load and high viral transmission.”At the same time, countries dependent on tourism revenue are pressing to admit more visitors. Most Caribbean countries are open to Americans, pending negative coronavirus tests — and some European countries are not far behind. Travel restrictions in Greece, where tourism accounts for around 25 percent of the country’s work force, were eased in mid-April, allowing for fully vaccinated travelers from the United States, Britain, Israel and European Union member states, among other places, to visit without quarantining or providing negative coronavirus tests. (A broader reopening is planned for later this month.)For now, it’s hard to know whether the travel industry is in the throes of a temporary transition or staring at the long-term complexities of a clash involving wishful thinking, the hard truths of a relentless pandemic and the possibility of responsible tourism.Whatever the case, there’s a churning array of forces affecting the prospects for overseas travel.Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, which is normally crowded with tourists, was empty during a coronavirus lockdown in November. Germany is now in another lockdown. Lena Mucha for The New York TimesA dire global realityWould-be international travelers, particularly vaccinated Americans, are entering an increasingly chaotic moment when dreams of travel — fueled by more than a year of confinement — are at odds with the facts of a largely shuttered and still reeling outside world.Globally, more new coronavirus cases were reported in recent weeks than at any point since the onset of the pandemic. The numbers are being driven by an uncontrolled outbreak in India, but they also account for troubling trends among European destinations popular with Americans, from France and Germany to Italy and Spain, some of which are now undergoing extended lockdowns and curfews.In Germany, for example, a new round of lockdowns, aimed at combating a third wave of infections, is expected to last until June.Such developments might be hard for Americans to fully appreciate from afar, given the promising trends at home. But government agencies have taken note.In April, the U.S. State Department vastly expanded the list of countries in its “Level 4: Do Not Travel” category, adding, among dozens of destinations, Mexico, Canada and Britain, three of the most popular destinations for Americans. Many Caribbean countries, including the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, are also at Level 4.In India, which is facing a cataclysmic surge, the presence of a potentially more menacing variant — possibly more dangerous to children, and against which vaccines may be less effective — is complicating the crisis. For the prospective traveler, it hints at the threat that emerging variants could play in the months and years to come.Inequality and lagging vaccine rolloutsOutside the United States, vaccination numbers remain comparatively low — in some cases, alarmingly so.In Italy, around 11 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. The number in Mexico, historically the country most visited by American tourists, stands at around 6 percent. In Canada, it’s at 3 percent — though that number is partly explained by the long interval between first and second doses there. By comparison, the United States just passed the 32 percent mark.While many of these percentages have been rising more quickly in recent weeks, there is also reason to believe that progress in some countries may stall.Global vaccine supplies have been disrupted by the surge of coronavirus cases in India, which has curtailed exports in order to meet growing domestic demands. Like most countries, Canada, for example, is entirely dependent on foreign sources for its vaccine supply; as a measure of the share of its population that is fully vaccinated, Canada now lags behind more than 50 other nations.Meanwhile, the push for a return to leisure travel raises questions about the ethics of vaccinated travelers demanding services among largely unvaccinated hosts. Such questions are especially complicated within communities that are economically dependent on tourism revenue.Dr. Mami Taniuchi, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Virginia, said that while the risk of breakthrough infections among vaccinated travelers is low, there is nevertheless an increased risk among unvaccinated workers who would not otherwise be coming together in such large numbers, or in such close quarters, to accommodate tourists.“The risks among vaccinated travelers are significantly reduced, but I worry about the risk of transmission among the people who are working around them,” Dr. Taniuchi said. It would help, she added, if travel workers were part of priority vaccination plans.“In a situation where there’s a mixing of people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated, most of the transmission events are going to be among those who are not vaccinated,” she said.The trouble with ‘vaccine passports’Health certificates that prove one’s immunization status — commonly referred to as “vaccine passports” — have been touted as keys to unlocking international travel. But so far the prospect of developing an easy-to-use and widely accepted digital certificate has been tripped up by a web of bureaucratic, logistical and technical snags.The Biden administration has ruled out the possibility of a centralized federal vaccination database. Instead, individual states (and some cities and territories) have been maintaining a patchwork of records. Any company or organization hoping to develop a digital vaccine certificate in the United States would therefore need to track down immunization data from a range of registries.At present, the most viable option for Americans to prove their immunization status while traveling internationally is to present the Covid-19 vaccination record cards they received when they got their shots. But the cards are easily forged. Several states have offered downloadable PDFs of the cards freely on their websites; fakes have even been offered for sale on TikTok, eBay and Craigslist.The development of digital health certificates is a multidimensional challenge, involving public policy, public health, customer experience and international cooperation, said Eric Piscini, who has overseen the development of IBM’s health passport app, Digital Health Pass.“I’m very optimistic about the long term,” Mr. Piscini said, “but the road is not easy.” He estimated that the European Commission’s Digital Green Certificate won’t be fully operational until late June or July. Integration with platforms beyond Europe will take time.Until then, he said, countries like Greece — which, for now, is verifying visitors’ immunization statuses with easily forged paper certificates — may face both a lack of trust from travelers and pushback from locals who fear that the policies are putting them at risk.Chairs were piled up in front of a restaurant that was closed because of lockdowns in Paris in March.Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAltered destinationsEven if international tourists could travel safely and securely, and without risking the well-being of their hosts, visitors may face yet another impediment: Their destinations may lack many of their usual draws.Throughout the world, the pandemic has shuttered museums, forced restaurants to close and curtailed countless other cultural offerings. Many regions in Europe are subject to local curfews that come and go as case numbers fluctuate. Last month in Spain, confusion reigned over whether socially distanced beachgoers and sunbathers were required to wear masks, though the rule was eventually clarified. (They aren’t.)All of which suggests that, in the near future, there may be a gap between tourists’ expectations and their destinations’ restricted realities.In Paris, for example, bars and restaurants have been closed since the end of October. So, too, are museums — including the Louvre, normally one of the most visited museums in the world. Nighttime curfews, from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., have emptied the city’s streets.In late April, President Emmanuel Macron of France announced plans to relax certain restrictions beginning on May 19, but he left open the possibility of regional delays. The country, he said, will be able to pull an “emergency brake” in certain places, if need be.“I really don’t know what’s going to be attractive to tourists in Paris, now or in the near future,” said Yumi Kayayan, a travel writer who lives near the Louvre, citing a dearth of cultural offerings. The rules governing curfews and regional restrictions, she added, would be difficult for foreigners to make sense of. “To be honest, the rules are very confusing right now even for Parisians,” she said.The big picture, and the costsIn 2019, the number of international tourist arrivals reached 1.5 billion globally — a staggering figure. But grasping the scale of international travel, and the industries that have grown to support and encourage it, is central to understanding the forces pressing now for its return.Governments, tourism boards, airlines, hotel companies, travel agencies and cruise operators, along with tour bus drivers, housekeepers, local guides, pilots, restaurateurs, museum operators, bed-and-breakfast hosts, entertainers, caterers, fishermen, shopkeepers and bar owners — in short, all the people standing to profit from tourism dollars — are facing extreme economic pressure not to lose out on another tourism season. The past year without travel, when international arrivals dropped from 1.5 billion to 381 million, was devastating. For many, another similar year would be unthinkable.And so an already stressed system has been forced to confront an existential quandary: Do countries opt for continuing international lockdowns, or do they increase the risk of disease and court much-needed tourism revenue? New Zealand, which, through a combination of stringent lockdowns, border closures and strict quarantines, has all but eliminated the coronavirus from its shores, has staked its claim at one end of the spectrum. Greece appears to be claiming the other.There are no easy answers, no universal solutions. In many cases, the onus will fall on individual tourists — the fortunate and vaccinated few, plied with incentives and feverish for travel — to thoughtfully navigate the ethical considerations.Of all the variables, only one thing seems inevitable: The choices we make, whether to venture out or huddle close to home, are unlikely to bode well for the individual workers — the unfortunate and unvaccinated many — who, by dint of circumstance, are vulnerable to both the virus and the teetering fortunes of a hard-hit industry.“I do think we’ve learned important lessons over the course of the year about how to engage more safely in public spaces,” said Dr. Fortune, who emphasized that it’s important for vaccinated travelers to continue testing, wearing masks and practicing social distancing.“I think the real danger,” she added, “is that the most vulnerable people are the ones who have the least ability to mitigate risk.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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    In Canada, Americans Are Missed, With Limits

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskNew Variants TrackerVaccine RolloutAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Canada, Americans Are Missed, With LimitsU.S. visitors usually mean big business for Canada’s tourism industry. But the pandemic has blunted lonesomeness for the country’s best friend.Before the pandemic, American visitors were frequent guests at the Fairmont le Château Frontenac, a castlelike hotel in Quebec City.Credit…GettyFeb. 10, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETDavid McMillan, the co-owner of Montreal’s famed temple of gluttony, Joe Beef, used to spend his days obsessing over his signature dishes like rabbit with mustard sauce, and lobster spaghetti. These days, however, he has another preoccupation: Studying American vaccination rates.Before the pandemic, so many American gastronomy pilgrims from New York, Boston and Los Angeles came each week to Joe Beef that many local residents, facing a 10-week waiting list, all but gave up trying. The Americans, Mr. McMillan recalled wistfully, thought nothing of buying expensive bottles of Champagne and sucking down oysters until midnight, before purchasing his prophetic-sounding cookbook “Surviving the Apocalypse.”“Ah, how I miss the Americans,” said Mr. McMillan, who presides over a mini-empire of four restaurants in the city, including Liverpool House, where Justin Trudeau once bromanced President Obama. American tourists, he added, accounted for half of Joe Beef’s pre-pandemic weekly revenue of about $118,000, or about 150,000 Canadian dollars. “When the Americans were here every night it felt like we were putting on a Broadway show.”David McMillan is the co-owner of Montreal’s Joe Beef, a restaurant which attracted American gastronomy pilgrims before the pandemic.Credit…David Giral for The New York Times“Now, I look every day at how the U.S. vaccination is going,” he added. “And I get messages every day from American clients asking when they can get back in.”It’s a question many in the Canadian tourism industry have also been asking, ever since the Canada-U. S. border was closed to nonessential travelers in March. The loss of American visitors, armed with their strong dollars and consuming zeal, has buffeted popular destinations like Montreal, Quebec City and Vancouver, already reeling from a debilitating pandemic. Canadian airlines have been forced to make thousands of layoffs.More than two thirds of the 21 million international tourists who came to Canada in 2019 were from the United States, according to government data, with Americans pumping about $8.7 billion into the economy. That’s compared to the nearly $1.3 billion spent by Chinese visitors, about $1 billion by Britons and about $735 million by the French.The absence of American tourists feels acute in many quarters of Canada. Above, a deserted stretch of Rue Notre Dame West in Montreal.Credit…David Giral for The New York TimesAbsence makes the heart grow fonder — but not enough to open borders.Canadians have long had a love-hate relationship with their larger, showier neighbor south of the border. That ambivalence was magnified during the Trump administration, when the mercurial American president slapped punishing tariffs on the country, suggested Canada had burned down the White House during the War of 1812 (the country didn’t then exist) and called its prime minister, Justin Trudeau, “very dishonest” and “weak.”But it has always been more love than hate when it comes to travel between the two countries, with Americans drawn by Canada’s proximity, its common language in most regions and its mix of cosmopolitan cities and natural landscapes.The inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who spent her disco-dancing teenage years in Montreal, has renewed the ardor between the two allies, while vaccination has created cautious optimism about taming the pandemic. Still, while the tourism industry is experiencing one of its worst crises since World War II, recent polls show that the vast majority of Canadians want the borders to remain closed. Canadians, a typically rule-abiding people with a deference to scientific authority, have looked with some horror at the spiraling infection rates in the United States, and the handling of the coronavirus during the Trump administration.Mélanie Joly, Canada’s minister of economic development, who is responsible for tourism, said keeping the borders closed was a matter of pragmatism. “We can’t talk about reopening the economy until we stop the spread of the virus,” she said in an interview. Lamenting the absent Americans, she added: “It’s a bit like losing your best friend but you are sick and your best friend is sick and everyone is better off staying at home.”She said she hoped the travel industry would be “back on its feet” by September, as vaccination in Canada and the United States accelerated. The border, she stressed, would remain closed until the pandemic is contained.The Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal is popular with American visitors. Credit…David Giral for The New York TimesAt the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal, American museum-goers from New York, Massachusetts and Vermont helped turn a pre-pandemic exhibition on Leonard Cohen, the gravelly-voiced Montreal-born balladeer, into a blockbuster. But the museum’s director, John Zeppetelli, said knowing friends and colleagues in the art world who had contracted the virus while attending art fairs last year in the United States and elsewhere had underscored the need for caution. “Public health has to supersede economic concerns,” Mr. Zeppetelli said.Covid-19 tests, quarantines and a cruise ship ban create obstacles to travel.As it is, Canada itself is experiencing a lethal second wave, with a curfew in effect in Quebec, a lockdown in most parts of Ontario, the country’s most populous province, and border restrictions in each of the country’s Atlantic coast provinces that have required even Canadians from other provinces to quarantine.The Coronavirus Outbreak More