Liquor and Lotteries, striking workers headed back to negotiations

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This article was published 17/08/2023 (778 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries and the union that represents its 1,400 striking liquor workers will return to the bargaining table Friday.

After a pause in negotiations while strikes continued across the province, Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union president Kyle Ross said he’s cautiously hopeful about renewed contract talks during the bitter dispute.

”I wouldn’t say I’m super optimistic,” he said Thursday. “But I am slightly hopeful that we can hopefully build up some goodwill between the employer and ourselves and we can get to a place where this ends.”

The Crown corporation hasn’t wavered from its contract offer and noted the 60-day deadline for a negotiated settlement is fast-approaching; should a contract not be agreed upon by Sept. 17, the parties will go to legally binding arbitration.

The union wants to avoid that.

“I think our members really expect us to get a bargained deal at the table. They want the ability to vote on that deal. They want to control their destiny,” Ross said. “Our goal from Day 1 was always to try and bargain a deal… arbitration is imposed, and then our members lose their say.”

Ross said arbitration could take more than a year. but a negotiated contract can be put into place quickly.

He said the union is focusing on bargaining, not on the possibility of future arbitration.

“We’re always wanting to bargain the deal at the table and the employer is showing up to that table, so that can start dialogue,” he said. “So, hopefully, we can resolve this.”

MLL said a conciliator has recommended arbitration move forward on the contentious wage issues while leaving the Crown corporation’s other proposals in place to protect “significant” gains for workers in other areas. It has said the union is prolonging the fight.

“The whole job of an impartial arbitrator is to determine what is fair and reasonable when the parties are deadlocked, which is exactly why the independent conciliator recommended arbitration,” MLL president and CEO Gerry Sul said in a news release.

Neither side has changed its demands since the MGEU began job action, with rotating walkouts, on July 19.

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The corporation is offering two per cent annual wage increases in a four-year deal.

Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries said the return to the bargaining table doesn’t signal a change to its original wage offer.

“Both Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries and the MGEU are meeting with the conciliator tomorrow… to review and discuss some outstanding items outside of the general wage increase, where our two parties remain at an impasse,” a spokesperson said in an email.

The union wants 3.3 per cent in 2023 and 3.6 per cent in both 2024 and 2025 — the same increases that Premier Heather Stefanson and all MLAs receive.

malak.abas@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.