Striking LCBO workers tried to make the fight about Doug Ford. They picked a losing battle

No matter how thirsty drinkers got, Ontarians didn’t swallow what the union was selling about the perils of coolers in supermarkets.

Its central allegation, the core motivation for this strike, was that Premier Doug Ford is secretly selling off the LCBO through a stealth privatization. And that pre-mixed drinks would unravel the Crown-owned corporation unless the Ontario Public Service Employees Union could keep them out of supermarkets and corner stores.

It was always an ambitious strike goal, arguably over-ambitious. The idea that OPSEU workers were striking to protect the LCBO’s revenue stream, which bankrolls hospitals and schools, was always overstated.

By Friday, as the strike entered its third week, the union walked back those press lines. And signed on the dotted line (until last-minute back-to-work snags caused fresh delays).

Apart from the bad blood and bickering over bargaining tactics, the democratic reality is that Ford has never made a secret of his determination to liberalize alcohol sales in the last two elections. He’s on track to win a third mandate in the same vein.

Ford is not the first premier to change the way the LCBO distributes booze — Kathleen Wynne led the way — and he won’t be the last to preside over a shape-shifting retail landscape, in-store and online.

OPSEU imagined there would be an unstoppable upsurge in public anxiety about booze shortages. And an upswell in public support for their cause once they made it all about Ford.

Yet there was no palpable public distress over shuttered liquor outlets, no great upset over increasingly empty shelves in The Beer Store or supermarkets. Even with the booze no longer flowing at regular rates, even with temperatures soaring, there were no signs of tempers rising.

That’s not to say the strike had no impact. But the people who were hurting weren’t the intended targets.

Bars and restaurants felt the pain from the first day, as the LCBO’s contingency supply plans were thwarted by OPSEU’s picketing plans. Workers in the food and beverage industry were starting to sweat about a potentially dry summer, clearly collateral damage.

Personally, I support the LCBO and oppose privatization; I’m also a union member and believer. But I can’t imagine my fellow Unifor workers going on strike against a giant supermarket chain over the unhealthy product mix on its shelves — demanding, say, that it remove sugar-laden soft drinks.

Drinking has domino effects, and there’s always a quid pro quo for quaffing coolers. One reason the Ford government is granting wider access to these cocktails is to incentivize supermarkets to start taking back empties on the premises — rather than forcing drinkers to drag bottles to The Beer Store for refunds.

A decade ago, I crusaded against Ontario’s unholy duopoly of the privately owned Beer Store and the publicly owned LCBO. The last Liberal government finally brought beer and wine to supermarkets, but I’ve never understood Ford’s rush to include smaller convenience stores that are inconveniently inefficient.

Still, the premier ran and won two elections on that pledge. Anyone who believed Ford was wrong should have worked to defeat him at the ballot box, rather than ransom him on the picket line.

No matter how wrong-headed, the premier was within his rights to stand his ground on pre-mixed drinks, telling OPSEU: “That ship has sailed — it’s halfway across Lake Ontario.”

Raising the stakes in this game of poker, Ford responded to the strike by moving up the date for expanded cooler sales even earlier. When its public defiance met public indifference, OPSEU ultimately dropped its unattainable demand.

To the credit of both the union and employer, the tentative deal offers increased job security to LCBO workers who feared for their livelihoods. That said, the readiness of the government to agree undermines OPSEU’s theory of putative privatization, which remains unproven and unpersuasive.

As my colleague Robert Benzie reported this week, internal polling for Ford’s Tories showed 61 per cent support for expanded sales of “ready-to-drink” cocktails beyond the LCBO. Almost as many — 57 per cent — supported the expansion of booze sales to convenience stores and more supermarkets, and a whopping 69 per cent backed the decade-old decision by the previous Wynne government to lay the groundwork with supermarket sales.

That same poll, by Campaign Research, also showed the Tories enjoying a remarkable 41 per cent support, versus the Liberals at 26 per cent and the NDP at 18 (echoing almost precisely a previous poll for the Toronto Star by Abacus Data). The union clearly disagrees with those public sentiments — on both booze and ballot choices.

“This round of bargaining is about what’s best for Ontario,” OPSEU president JP Hornick proclaimed this week, just before ending the strike.

Strikes don’t determine what’s best for the province. For better or for worse, that’s what democratic elections are for.