Nine thousand unionized Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) employees walked off the job on Friday, closing the doors to thousands of stores across the province and launching the first-ever strike in the retailer’s history.

Stores are expected to be closed for at least 14 days.

Brock University Professor of Health Sciences Dan Malleck says although the strike itself is historic in nature, the fact that alcohol is more widely available today than in the past means store closures won’t be as “big a deal as they would have been 30 years ago, when the LCBO was the main point of access.”

After months of bargaining, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) and the LCBO failed to come to an agreement on wage increases, a demand for more full-time jobs and a desire to update language in the collective agreement that would protect existing jobs as well as the future of the LCBO itself.

“Private retailers are not bound to have unions, they aren’t bound to pay their staff a living wage, so their concerns about jobs are very valid,” Malleck says.

The LCBO was formed post-prohibition in 1927, under the guiding principle of what is known as disinterested management, he says. It served as a balancing force between the public’s desire to have access to alcohol and temperance concerns about the potential harms of alcohol.  Under disinterested management, the priority was controlling access, rather than profit.

“Fundamental to the idea of the LCBO is the ‘C’ — control — and the LCBO’s union has always presented itself as the frontline controlling access to this product that could be considered problematic,” Malleck says. “The rhetoric coming out of the union now has been more about the loss of profit to the people as opposed to control, however, which is an interesting framing because up until now the LCBO and its union have emphasized their expertise in managing access to alcohol.”

For decades, the LCBO continued to operate under this control-focused model, with few calls for widespread change.

“The LCBO has been a convenient administrator of alcohol and a very appealing revenue generator and there hasn’t been a huge public outcry about having it any other way,” Malleck says of the retailer’s role in the province’s liquor sales.

The strike times with the Ford government’s recent move to allow convenience stores and all grocery stores to sell beer, wine and ready-to-drink cocktails ahead of schedule, however.

The timing really helped the union’s position, Malleck says, “as it could feel to some people that the roll out of expanded sales is haphazard, so the union can tap into those worries about it going too fast.”

Malleck also says the further proliferation of alcohol sales will inevitably impact the scope of the LCBO’s foothold in the market to some degree, potentially leading to store closures and lost revenue because of increased competition.

Another sticking point with OPSEU was the inclusion of ready-to-drink spirits in the plan for expanded retail sales.

“It’s usually beer, wine, cider in private sales and spirits still controlled by the province so to do these premixed drinks is sort of breaking that model,” he says. “It does open up the door to spirit sales in stores, but I think that it would be a really big deal in Ontario to see that happen.”

When it comes to the safety and health impacts of having broader access to alcohol across Ontario, however, he says concerns may be overblown.

“The idea of booze being sold by for-profit companies can seem like we’re about to lose control — I’m not sure if that’s the case — but it’s something that plays on the minds of people and we see it every time an aspect of booze sales is about to be liberalized,” he said. “With alcohol regulation there’s always people that think that any more liberalization is going to cause complete social chaos, and it’s not.”

Photo credit: “LCBO at Yonge Wellesly” by  lcbomediacentre is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.