More than 9,000 Liquor Control Board Of Ontario (LCBO) workers are on strike in Ontario, after years of attacks, in a fight against overwork and privatization. So far the strike has shut down a large segment of the industry, with the sympathy of much of the public. This support must be seized upon to launch a general struggle against the Ford government.
Years of attacks spark simmering rage
Since July 5, the Ontario Public Sector Employees Union (OPSEU) has shut down 650 of the province’s 669 public liquor stores—calling it a “dry summer” from Ford.
This is the LCBO’s first strike in its 97-year history. But it’s a long time coming.
Since the 2008 crisis, Liberal and Tory governments have overseen a massive shift at the LCBO towards precarious work and overwork.
Today, the overwhelming majority of the union’s members are casual or part-time, with little stability and no benefits. Even worse, successive governments have tried to freeze their wages—first under the Liberals’ public-sector wide “net-zero” bargaining scheme and now under Doug Ford’s various wage cutting and union-busting measures.
These attacks have sparked a simmering rage among the LCBO workers, one clearly seen in their strike votes—with 90 per cent or more supporting a strike—in 2009, 2013, 2017 and this year.
As OPSEU Local 842 president Judy Jones told BayToday: “That is going to affect jobs and as it is we have a lot of casual workers with hardly any hours. Now they are going to have no hours… The chance of [qualifying for benefits] becoming a reality is slimmer and slimmer each time.”
Workers fight Ford’s union busting
Premier Doug Ford has gone out of his way to antagonize the workers further.
On top of offering a wage “increase” of seven per cent over three years—barely matching projected inflation—Ford has openly threatened the workers’ jobs.
Eager to distract from his regular scandals, he’s promised to move LCBO products like ready-to-drink cocktails into private convenience and big box stores, most of which are non-union. This will build on the Liberals’ initial steps to privatize beer and wine sales into grocery stores, but on a far higher scale.
This plan will mean potential job cuts for thousands of OPSEU members. According to the union, management even told the union at the bargaining table: “We can’t guarantee your future.”
In an official video, he explicitly invited Ontarians to buy booze “even though the LCBO workers are on strike”—complete with a digital map of scab locations.
Ford cannot tell the 2.5 million Ontarians who lack a family doctor where they can find one. He cannot tell them which of several hundred emergency rooms are closed. But he can provide a map days into the LCBO strike telling people how to buy scab booze.
The fact that Ford had an interactive scab map ready to go is further evidence, along with advanced stockpiling of third-party warehouses, that his union-busting government had long planned this attack on LCBO workers. These workers did not go on strike. They were locked out.
More quietly, LCBO management has plans to slowly reopen stores.
But the workers have held out. Already, reports suggest they’ve paralyzed much of the liquor and restaurant industry. Liquor shelves, according to the Star, are almost empty.
According to the food service lobby group Restaurants Canada, up to 40 per cent of its members’ revenue is at risk. And these bosses’ quiet plans to buy the aforementioned scab booze has been reportedly “scrapped due to the threat of picketing.”
Moreover, polls suggest that Ford has not succeeded in turning the public against the workers.
When the question is posed in Doug Ford’s terms—as an “expansion” of booze sales—it is true that the public is roughly split. But, when the question is put clearly, a majority of Ontarians oppose privatization.
On the picket lines, OPSEU has received support across communities and across the labour movement. OPSEU’s fight is notably supported by the private sector unions that represent workers in some of the grocery stores that run some of the LCBO’s already privatized services.
This support must be seized upon and broadened into a clear fight against the attacks.
Fighting attacks on jobs and working conditions
For Doug Ford, privatizing these services is about more than just a billion-dollar handout to the province’s retail bosses.
Fundamentally, these services will only prove lucrative if the province’s capitalists can extract a profit at the point of sale. That will inevitably mean attacking workers’ wages and benefits, as these same corporations do regularly with their existing retail operations.
That means the privatization bid will, in all likelihood, drag down wages and conditions for workers across the province.
This is more than incidental. In fact, it’s part of why business groups like chambers of commerce, the right-wing media, and the Tory Party campaign to ax public sector jobs and privatize services. Sometimes they call it “market discipline,” or “correcting” the balance of “employer-employee bargaining.” Other times they push cuts and privatization schemes to help reduce “the cost of hiring workers.” But the effect is the same.
Now that the struggle has started, Ford has shown his further willingness to forego millions in lost revenue to win. This right-wing government is keen to make an example of OPSEU—especially after Ford was defeated by CUPE education workers in 2022.
For these reasons, the attack on OPSEU is an attack on workers across the province that must be fought by the whole labour movement.
As one LCBO worker told Communist Revolution: “The LCBO can come to an agreement with us, but then what’s going to happen if Doug Ford just continues to roll out his plan? We’re on strike with the LCBO, not with Doug Ford. We need to strike the government.”
Fundamentally, this means going on the offensive—not just defending the status quo.
For one, the best way to defend these jobs is to organize the unorganized workers in these non-union private shops, to block the sale of scab booze and raise the floor for all of us.
Likewise, while it is true that the LCBO’s revenues help fund the province’s schools and hospitals, the question does not end there. Ultimately, the province’s schools, hospitals and other vital services should not depend on booze money to keep the lights on. The province is dripping in wealth and that wealth needs to be put in the hands of the working class.
This will mean fighting the privatization bid by expropriating all essential industries—including the convenience and grocery monopolies. And it will mean replacing their union-busting managers with workers’ managers and running these industries in the interest of all working people.
