The strike taking place at the LCBO is a natural place for a history lesson. A lesson that is indespensable in ensuring an understanding of just how it is that brave and courageous workers/union members have taken on the Ontario government in the form of the crown corporation known as the LCBO.
Not that long ago there was a period of record setting prosperity. Prosperity that elevated the standard of living for vast numbers of people across the entire socio-economic landscape. The beginning and end of this period is debated, but for the sake of discussion, it is from shortly after the end of the second world war until the onset of the trilateral attack on public services, working people and unions in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
The faces of this attack came in the form of Ronald Reagan, Margret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney and their backers and enablers. This attack has never been more intensive than in its current modern day form. Only today, the face of this dogma and billionaire driven attack is everywhere from regressive federal governments and provincial governments, all the way to local politicians in too many places to name individually.
“This prosperity, is correctly attributed to much higher levels of taxation on those most able to pay, appropriate levels of taxation on corporations, a well-funded public services sector and a rapid increase in the percentage of workers in unions. This postwar prosperity should have been the model upon which a fair and equitable society was built on” says Labour Council President and OSSTF-OPT member, Kevin Smith.
As a lifelong union member, Labour Council VP for Bruce County and CUPE member, Dave Trumble, makes the point “that changing direction on these years of ever improving fairness and equity and pulling the rug out from under working people was well disguised. Referred to as trickle-down economics, reducing the tax burden, greater flexibility, increased competition and many more phrases we now know only too well as the “dog whistles” of those hoarding wealth, and readily absorbed by those unable to grasp that they have watched as their standard of living is diminished and in many cases taken away from them. It is the essence of privatization, destroying public services, and the insidious union busting that is a hallmark of Conservative and right wing governments the world over that is firmly at the root of the attack on the LCBO and the workers represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU)”.
With sales at the LCBO being a contributor of billions of dollars to public services in Ontario there is no lie that can ever justify the actions of the Ford government in this situation. There is a starkly plain choice to be made. An LCBO with regulated sales, proper staff levels and adequate compensation and benefits for LCBO staff sets the LCBO up for successfully converting sales to billions that can be invested in Ontario for all citizens of Ontario. The Ford alternative, incipient in its description and execution, is the gateway for the undoing of the LCBO and the enriching of Ford’s friends and enablers at the expense of all citizens of Ontario.
Labour Council VP for Grey County and CUPE member, Chris Stephen is a public employee and knows only too well the peril of undoing well-functioning services. “After all,” Chris notes, “Ford is comfortable in withholding money that is already in the public coffers with the sole intention of driving public services into the hands of private business. We all know how much private business cares about the well-being of the general population of Ontario. They do not care at all, but only seek to enrich themselves and their co-conspirators.”
Generated by the failure of the employer to present a reasonable deal to the OPSEU members of the LCBO, it is not an overstatement to say that the outcome of the dispute is about the very future of public services in Ontario. Just as with private health clinics, incremental privatization of the LCBO will ultimately result in a Ford driven wholesale feeding frenzy of public assets being sold off. In the end, this is the gateway to destruction of public services in Ontario leaving citizens to a future of only “pay as you go” and never ending service fees.
The ongoing dispute at the LCBO is a must win for workers to be an overall win for all those in Ontario. An alternative version where the LCBO is lead off the ledge of privatization is a win for only the richest in Ontario. Pick an alternative, but we all need the LCBO and well-funded public services.
The Grey Bruce Labour Council has been the voice of workers in Grey and Bruce Counties since 1956.
