Liquor strike drives customers to vendors, private wine stores

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This article was published 02/08/2023 (818 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Private vendors are being deluged with customers and are struggling to meet the new demand as a labour dispute between unionized staff and Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries closes down Liquor Marts and reduces the supply of booze.

In Winnipeg, the Norwood Beer Store had $20,000 in extra sales in just two days. While business is booming, customers are on edge, general manager Haley Collen said.

“I’ve got people giving us grief because I don’t have (stock),” she said.

The store has run out of coolers, especially popular during the summer, such as “White Claw, Snapple, Bacardi cocktails,” said Collen as she lists the products normally available from the MLL distribution centre, also subject to the strike.

This is the third week her store won’t be able to have its order filled.

“I usually will order almost $15,000 to $20,000 worth of stuff, so now we’re missing all of that,” she said.

Fourteen-hundred members of the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union have gone on rotating strikes to back their demand for higher wages after their contract lapsed in March 2022. The starting wage is $14.91 an hour. Manitoba’s minimum wage will increase to $15.30/hr in October. About 150 people who work at the King Edward Street distribution centre have been on the picket line since July 19.

The union and Crown corporation have used increasingly aggressive tactics. Most recently, MLL announced an indefinite lockout at all Liquor Mart Express stores (locations inside grocery stores) starting Thursday, and MGEU distribution centre workers will remain on strike until Sunday morning while retail workers who are on the job refuse to perform receiving duties.

“(MLL) is taking these measured and proportional steps to ensure we can continue providing retail liquor service to Manitobans,” said Gerry Sul, president and CEO of Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries in a statement Wednesday.

MGEU confirmed retail employees would return to work Friday and remain on the job throughout the long weekend, unless the Crown corporation imposes a lockout. Some Liquor Marts might be open Thursday, but would be staffed with managers and other non-union staff.

“Our gesture in announcing our intentions for the immediate future is to give people some ability to plan and to shop when they need to. We know this has been difficult for customers at Liquor Marts,” MGEU president Kyle Ross said.

In Richer, people heading to nearby campgrounds, who would normally stop at a Liquor Mart, are instead going to Burnell’s Food Plus because Liquor Marts are closed or low on certain drinks, said owner Norm Burnell.

The store had extra stock, but with a long weekend approaching, that stock is quickly dwindling, and he hasn’t been able to order more.

Burnell typically gets two to four pallets of product from the distribution centre each week, but the last stock he received was half a pallet, which he had to pick up from a Liquor Mart in Steinbach that had some stock to spare, on Tuesday.

He worries the situation will get worse if the strike drags on.

“It’s going to be like COVID times, where there were shortages of stuff,” he said.

Burnell briefly considered travelling to Ontario to buy a truckload of stock, but he’s optimistic the dispute will be settled before he has to resort to that.

“They’re going to have to get the distribution side figured out,” he said.

“They’re the only distributor for liquor, I can’t get it anywhere else. Whereas groceries, if Superstore was on strike, I could go to Sobeys or Costco. When they hold the whole (stock), we’re kind of held at gunpoint here.”

Collen said she met with MLL several weeks ago and was assured there would be no issues. That hasn’t been the case.

“I wish I had more answers from them,” she said. “They haven’t really been reaching out and letting us know what’s going on.”

Ross said he sympathizes with the private vendors.

“I think it’s really unfortunate that they’re caught up in this fight. We know that they’re not the problem. We know, in the rural communities, that these are the hub of the communities, some of these private vendors,” he said.

“We’re just trying to get a fair deal.”

The distribution site has been the epicentre of labour action because disrupting the work done there makes the biggest waves, Ross said.

“We know that it forces (MLL) to make difficult decisions, and there’s a simple decision for them to make — they can offer us a fair deal, and it’ll be over,” he said.

The dispute has had the tills ringing at the few private wine stores that operate in Manitoba.

At Kenaston Wine Market, the new foot traffic has been an opportunity to create new regulars, general manager Steven Kotelniski said.

“I wouldn’t say I’m particularly surprised by (the new customers),” he said.

“But it’s nice for us to be able to get people trying some wines that they wouldn’t have otherwise. A lot of our selection is different from what’s at the Liquor Marts.”

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The workers want wage raises in line with Manitoba MLAs and Premier Heather Stefanson — 3.3 per cent in 2023 and 3.6 per cent in 2024 and 2025.

The employer is offering 2.0 per cent per year over four years and a raise to the starting wage of $2.38 an hour above minimum wage, should the current agreement be ratified.

The union announced plans to hold a noon-hour “rally for fairness” at the legislature Thursday to put pressure on the government.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

cierra.bettens@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.