Local LCBO employees are ready to strike if a deal can’t be reached through contract negotiations by midnight Friday.
Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union Local 741 members have set up their strike headquarters at the Lakehead Labour Centre and vice-president Robert Lorkowski said they’re prepared if negotiations fail later this week.
And despite the union voting 95 per cent in favour of a strike mandate in April, Lorkowski said nobody wants to strike.
“Hopefully we will get an agreement before the deadline,” he said. “We are still talking and that’s a good thing.”
The main issue in negotiations is there are too many employees on part-time or casual status that still work seven days a week, said Lorkowski.
“We want good jobs for the community and good jobs for Ontario,” he said, noting the LCBO made $1.6 billion in profits last year.
“It makes enough money to provide those good jobs,” he said.
The average part-time LCBO worker makes $26,000, which Lorkowski said is barely above the poverty line.
“These people want to raise their families … and have a good standard of living and retire with dignity. This corporation has the money to do that,” he said.
OPSEU Region 7 executive board member Mary Cory says these jobs are important for Thunder Bay and smaller communities in the North.
“The majority of the jobs are part-time and casual. You can’t have a fulltime life with a part-time job,” she said.
Cory said some managers are making salaries that make the province’s Sunshine List, but it’s a different story for those working in the stores; their hours are limited.
“They need to be negotiating a good and fair contract with the amount of money they’re bringing in,” she said.
OPSEU represents 7,000 LCBO employees that have been without a contract since March 31.
LCBO media relations coordinator Heather MacGregor said the LCBO is confident they can negotiate a contract that is both fair to the employee and accountable to the taxpayer.
“The negotiations are being conducted in an economic climate where our government owner is faced with tackling a $9.8 billion deficit. Every area of the public sector has been asked to do its part,” she said. “OPSEU accepted this when negotiating deals in other areas of the (Ontario Public Service) and we think it’s not realistic for them to think that wouldn’t apply here.”
In 2005 and 2009, OPSEU negotiated four-year deals with wage increases, but that was a different economic time, said MacGregor, adding that LCBO management has had their wages frozen for the past four years with another two years to go
