Michael Pinkus is looking forward to a potential LCBO strike:
Call me an anarchist but I want the LCBO to go on a nice, big, long strike. And by the time you read this newsletter I am 100% sure that the sheeple of the LCBO will have given their bargaining team the go ahead for strike action. Now the LCBO’s contract was up on March 31, 2013 — which means currently the guys and gals roaming, stocking and generally keeping track of the aisles are without a legal contract with the provincial liquor board. I’m not about to get into the nitty-gritty of the contract negotiations, but when I read in the Liquor Board Employees Division (LBED) Bargaining Bulletin: “The offer we received from management can only be described in one word: Outrageous!” — well I just felt that I had to look a little deeper to see how the LCBO was screwing their own people (which is a nice change from the people of Ontario they screw daily).
What outrage would I find on the pages of the LCBO’s proposal? Are they locking the doors and throwing employees out on their ears? Are they proposing actual punishment for selling to minors (like the sting David Menzies did in July of 2012)? Will there be repercussions for doing a bad job, breaking the law, real penalties?
Now I have met, had dealings with, and actually, once upon a time, worked alongside some very good LCBO employees, most of them casual part-timers — but I can tell you that for every one good one there’s two that are lazy, surly and just generally people you don’t want to deal with in a retail situation — and sadly, those are the one’s you are likely to remember. So from the LBED Bargain Bulletin dated March 1, 2013 here are 2 of the 9 crazy demands the LCBO is making of their employees and the Union’s response to those “outrageous” proposals (I highlight my favs, but you can read the full bulletin here):
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But who really suffers from an LCBO strike? California, Spain, Italy, France, Australia, Chile, in other words import wines and liquor producers, who can ONLY sell through the Province run monopoly, and they’ll be demanding the LCBO settle so their products get into the hands of Ontarians instead of sitting idly in warehouses collecting dust. Meanwhile local producers could see a boon as Ontarians thirst for wine is not met by the LCBO but instead by in-province wineries. Tourism to wine producing areas should also see an uptick; instead of visiting Grandma on a Saturday afternoon the family would pile into the car (with Grandma) to tour the highways and bi-ways of Ontario wine country. A long LCBO walk could mean that Ontarians finally get the taste for their homegrown wines en masse and will then demand greater access — one weekend away is quaint, but having to make the trek each and every weekend may prove too much. And with that kind of demand we could see movement in this province towards a freer market system with independent and corner wine stores. Maybe the government will get tired of having to pay all those wages, negotiating with an inflexible union and decide to sell off the LCBO — preferring instead to reap the rewards from taxes instead of paying the price of labour unrest … sigh, wouldn’t that be nice?!? As for the employees, the good ones will have no trouble finding a job in the public sector [I think Michael means private sector here], many in the same kind of newly created positions. The others? Well they’ll just go back to ditch digging where they belonged in the first place.
