In a summer already full of surprises for those in my line of work, it was a nice change of pace to be pleasantly surprised. But it happened late last week with the announcement, albeit a bumpy one, that the LCBO strike was ending. Despite speculation that the strike could go for months, stores are set to open again as early as Tuesday. Assuming that happens on schedule, the strike will have lasted just over two weeks.
This is great news, and I welcome it. Last week, I was interviewing participants in Ontario’s hospitality sector and home-grown alcohol industries. While I had certainly appreciated the extent to which restaurants and bars depend on the LCBO for much of the product they sell, I was surprised to hear from those in the alcohol industry how alarmed they were by the prospect of a long strike. My assumption had been that they might welcome capturing a bit more of the market and getting their products into the glasses of thirsty customers. I think there was some of that sentiment — you can read about it in my interviews — but that was at least matched, if not outright offset, by concern over the loss of the LCBO as a distributor with provincewide reach. So I’m happy for those businesses that the strike is ending and for the LCBO’s workers and also, of course, for Ontarians. It’s a win all around.
I had been genuinely curious about the political ramifications of all of this for the Ford government. Polling will eventually tell the tale, but I don’t see any sign of damage done to Ford et al. The strike probably didn’t last long enough for the public to be too badly affected, and the Ford government did not shy away from waging its side of the battle in full view of the public. On top of the controversial map discussed here in a recent column, there was also the government’s decision to accelerate the rollout of pre-made cocktails to more private-sector retail outlets. The union, of course, had wanted that stopped, and Ford instead sped it up, leaving the union with a fait accompli and some members of the public, no doubt, pleasantly surprised at the new options on store shelves.
I haven’t noticed any on shelves yet; my main alcohol-related observation on a recent shopping trip to a Toronto grocer was that its wine section was basically wiped out, with the inventory replaced by sparkling water and notes of apology from the store, which said it was hoping to find new supplies soon. But it seems that the government decisively won the battle over the future direction of alcohol liberalization in Ontario. The process begun under former premier Kathleen Wynne will clearly continue under Doug Ford.
With some limits. The government has agreed not to close any retail stores for the length of the new contract, which is interesting. I wonder whether the new retail options will render any existing LCBO outlets non-profitable and if that will be a battle fought during the next round of negotiations. (Ford, for his part, has said that he has no interest in shuttering any LCBO retail outlets.) Whatever the future may bring, the LCBO workers — for now, at least — can rest easy about their current outlets.
And the union certainly won some other significant victories. As I noted even before the strike, I was broadly sympathetic to the union’s monetary demands. I generally favour privatization of alcohol retail, but as it remains at least a partially public-sector service, those workers had a totally legitimate claim to make for large raises. Given recent inflationary and cost-of-living pressures, the 8 per cent raise agreed to will help restore the prior purchasing power of existing workers. (The further top-up for lower-wage workers, on top of the overall raise, will obviously be of great help to them.)
Also, there will be special wage boosts for some warehouse workers, something that jumped out at me as an interesting data point all on its own. We have all heard about the labour shortages striking many industries. I suspect that the LCBO was having a hard time competing for the skilled logistics workers that are needed to run a modern warehouse, perhaps bleeding staff to the likes of Walmart and Amazon and other large private-sector retailers that rely on just-in-time delivery for countless individual products.
So, yeah, all in all, there’s a lot to be happy about. The LCBO is getting back to work. Workers are getting a raise. Any imminent prospect of major job losses has been headed off, and consumers will soon have more choice in terms of where they can buy their preferred libation. It seems about as much win-win-win as we could expect.
But I can’t help but feel that we’ve punted a lot of the major questions down the road until this contract expires in three years. In 2027, when this government (or a successor) next sits down across a bargaining table from the LCBO workers’ negotiators, we’ll have three years’ worth of data on how the rapidly changing new normal of alcohol retail has worked and how Ontarians are feeling about it. If it’s worked well and if voters are happy, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the government push for even deeper, more structural reforms.
I don’t think the LCBO union negotiators would be either, mind you. That’s probably why they went on strike this time — better to fight now from a position of relative strength than later. Hopefully, they are content with what they won at the end of the first-ever strike. The next deal might be harder to reach.
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