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\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Stores are expected to be closed for at least 14 days.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t be as \u201cbig a deal as they would have been 30 years ago, when the LCBO was the main point of access.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrivate retailers are not bound to have unions, they aren\u2019t bound to pay their staff a living wage, so their concerns about jobs are very valid,\u201d Malleck says.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s desire to have access to alcohol and temperance concerns about the potential harms of alcohol.\u00a0 Under disinterested management, the priority was controlling access, rather than profit.<\/p>\n
\u201cFundamental to the idea of the LCBO is the \u2018C\u2019 \u2014 control \u2014 and the LCBO\u2019s union has always presented itself as the frontline controlling access to this product that could be considered problematic,\u201d Malleck says. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
For decades, the LCBO continued to operate under this control-focused model, with few calls for widespread change.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe LCBO has been a convenient administrator of alcohol and a very appealing revenue generator and there hasn\u2019t been a huge public outcry about having it any other way,\u201d Malleck says of the retailer\u2019s role in the province\u2019s liquor sales.<\/p>\n
The strike times with the Ford government\u2019s recent move to allow convenience stores and all grocery stores to sell beer, wine and ready-to-drink cocktails ahead of schedule, however.<\/p>\n
The timing really helped the union\u2019s position, Malleck says, \u201cas 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malleck also says the further proliferation of alcohol sales will inevitably impact the scope of the LCBO\u2019s foothold in the market to some degree, potentially leading to store closures and lost revenue because of increased competition.<\/p>\n
Another sticking point with OPSEU was the inclusion of ready-to-drink spirits in the plan for expanded retail sales.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d he says. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
When it comes to the safety and health impacts of having broader access to alcohol across Ontario, however, he says concerns may be overblown.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea of booze being sold by for-profit companies can seem like we\u2019re about to lose control \u2014 I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s the case \u2014 but it\u2019s something that plays on the minds of people and we see it every time an aspect of booze sales is about to be liberalized,\u201d he said. \u201cWith alcohol regulation there\u2019s always people that think that any more liberalization is going to cause complete social chaos, and it\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photo credit: “LCBO at Yonge Wellesly<\/a>” by \u00a0lcbomediacentre<\/a> is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019s history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":94325,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,4767,1],"tags":[7488,1512,368,745],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94316"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94322,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94316\/revisions\/94322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}