Opinion: LCBO strike could herald long and nasty battle over who sells booze in Ontario

Steven Tufts is a labour geographer in the faculty of environmental and urban change at York University.

The first strike in the LCBO’s history started on Friday. It was perhaps inevitable. There have been simmering tensions for decades. Then the Ford government’s recent changes to the alcohol retail landscape served as the tipping point. We are witnessing a potentially long and nasty existential strike over who sells booze in Ontario.

Creative thinking by unions, employers and the provincial government is now required to stabilize labour relations in the sector. Otherwise, labour disputes will be the new normal. It’s not just workers at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. Beer Store employees, represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers, could enter the fray, too.

In Ontario, the unique structure of alcohol retail distribution with Brewer’s Retail, the company behind the Beer Store, and the LCBO have long created conditions for unions to organize workers and secure living wages. As a teenager in the 1980s, I remember thinking the guys (and they were mostly guys back then) working at the beer store had it made.

Casualization of work and “permanent part-time” jobs paying lower wages, however, are now the norm among those workers. Decentralization of liquor distribution to wine stores, convenience outlets, grocery chains and now corner stores has shifted alcohol distribution and eroded jobs at the LCBO and Beer Store.

Meanwhile, the populist government strategy is about increasing access to booze for consumers through privatizing retail while maintaining control over wholesale ensuring some revenue stays in public coffers. That adds further pressure on liquor store workers. If LCBO retail sales decline it can close locations and liquidate the real estate it owns and leases.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he is giving the “little guy” corner store owner a chance to make some money. More accessible booze is hard to fight against, especially when we now have weed shops on every corner.

But the LCBO knew the Ontario Public Service Employees Union would fight back this time and had a plan in place with extended hours before closing for two weeks. Online, restaurant and grocery store distribution will be maintained and some retail stores are planned to be reopened if the strike continues.

OPSEU has countered the LCBO’s plan with a three-pronged strategy. First, the union is “fortressing” to protect the wages and working conditions of its current members. Members were mobilized with one of the highest voter turnouts and strike mandates in the history of the division to fight for the roll back of casualization. There is also a demand to double severance pay to drive up the costs of closing stores, potentially slowing down the pace of restructuring.

Second, the union has an extensive community engagement strategy. The message is that restructuring retail distribution will cost the taxpayer billions in lost revenue and only benefit private corporations. It is a slick multimedia campaign that uses humour and parody to draw attention to Mr. Ford “helping billionaires.” Community engagement also calls for public support online and at pickets, and rallies that will escalate as the strike continues. Here, the union isn’t just asking the public to read a flyer, but to distribute flyers themselves to neighbours as part of the struggle to keep the LCBO public.

The third strategy the union has adopted is a departure from past tactics. Instead of just promoting the benefits of the current retail system and its ability to regulate and distribute alcohol efficiently, the union is calling for growth and expansion with more unionized locations and new store formats such as the LCBO Express. OPSEU is conceding that the status quo is no longer acceptable to consumers as it responds to Mr. Ford’s cheap-beer-everywhere populism.

The LCBO and OPSEU have prepared for battle and are dug in for a long one. The Crown corporation is being forced to restructure by the government and thousands of workers face a threat to their livelihoods as retail competition increases. Unless we want labour disputes for the next decade, the government will have to come to the table with a serious plan to handle displaced alcohol retail workers and unions must also be given a serious role in the transition.

First, the government should support union-led training – not only retraining for workers who lose their jobs when the LCBO and the Beer Store close locations, but also training for new workers selling alcohol. Unions need a fair opportunity to build relationships and organize workers in convenience stores and training is a first step. The infrastructure and funding for such training programs is already in place with union training centres and Ontario’s Skills Development Fund.

A second more ambitious policy would be to legislate a higher minimum wage for all alcohol retail workers. The wage premium would recognize the extra training workers require, and distribute some of the new revenue from selling booze to non-union workers in convenience stores. It may even slow down the expansion of alcohol sales into convenience stores and allow all parties to manage the restructuring.

It is unfair to burden LCBO and Beer Store workers with the entire costs of restructuring our alcohol distribution system. Failure to negotiate a just transition for workers will only lead to endless labour disputes – and perhaps a few backyard stills.