Oh no. LCBO Workers Vote to Strike!

    Employees of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario voted 93% in favour of a strike in the event that a new collective agreement cannot be reached.  The old collective agreement expired at the end of March.  A strike of LCBO employees in the middle of summer?  In the on-line responses to this Toronto Star article,  you can already see folks arguing that LCBO workers should not have a right to strike, as if selling wine and scotch is an essential service.  Give me a break.
I’ve learned that the union has filed a bad faith bargaining complaint against the employer on the basis that the employer is refusing to provide the union with information about existing benefit and compensation levels of bargaining unit employees.  Sounds like bargaining is not going well.  Section 17 of the Labour Relations Act, the duty to bargain in good faith and to make reasonable efforts to conclude a collective agreement, requires employers to provide the union with all of the information about the bargaining unit employees existing terms and conditions of employment.    The reason is that the union has a legal obligation to bargain on behalf of the entire bargaining unit, and therefore it must have all relevant information in order to prepare its bargaining positions and evaluate the employer’s positions.  If I can get the Union’s pleadings, I will post them under my “Real Pleadings” category.
There are risks to both sides of a strike.  The main risk is that  it could fuel demands for the LCBO to be privatized, an idea that has been around for years.  Indeed, as the Star story notes, the employer appears to be playing up the threat of privatization as part of its bargaining strategy. Perhaps the employer should be careful with this strategy.  Neither the employer nor the union has an interest in that happening.  But since the LCBO is effectively a state-supported monopoly, a strike would seriously cut the flow of wine and spirits.  A strike of some duration could very well improve the political viability and circumstances for revisiting the privatization idea.  Beware the rebellious hostility of summer drinkers scorned.