It’s been three weeks since unionized Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries (MBLL) workers staged rotated walkouts, hoping to send a message to the provincial government that they need a more equitable wage contract.
As the August long weekend approached, with both parties still at a stalemate, many Manitobans found themselves scrambling to find the spirits they needed to wet their weekend whistles.
On that weekend, 18 Manitoba Liquor Mart locations closed, 15 of them in Winnipeg. In many other locations, liquor shelves were starting to look bare.
In response to the Crown corporation’s retail closures and subsequent employee lockouts, Manitoba Government and General Employees Union (MGEU) members entered a full-on strike on August 8.
“It has become very clear that the employer and the government have no intention of negotiating a fair and reasonable settlement at the bargaining table,” MGEU President Kyle Ross said in a press release. “Instead they seem focused on trying to intimidate our members with heavy-handed tactics like hiring replacement workers and locking out members who wanted to keep stores open to serve Manitobans through the long weekend.”
Employees of the MBLL distribution centres and the head office will also hit the picket lines.
In preparation for the strike, MBLL president Gerry Sul introduced what he called a strong contingency plan.
His plan is to send in replacement workers to take the place of picketers at one distribution centre in order to help keep product moving, even if on a diminished scale. By reducing the number of open Liquor Marts to seven or eight, retail stock can remain high at a few select locations rather than spreading inventory too thin.
All rural Crown-owned Liquor Marts were closed for business as of August 8, including larger centres such as Steinbach, Selkirk, and Stonewall.
Private Liquor Stores Struggle to Get Inventory
Private liquor vendors, such as the one found at Your Grocery People (YGP) in Niverville, the Esso station in St. Adolphe, and the Île-des-Chênes Country Store, are still offering liquor sales throughout the MBLL closures.
While their wine and spirits are regulated by the MBLL in terms of pricing, their ability to keep selling their stock isn’t. The reason is that their businesses don’t deal exclusively in alcoholic beverage sales.
Even so, an interrupted supply chain means that even their liquor offerings are waning rapidly. According to John Schmitke of YGP, the last wine and spirit delivery he received was on July 20, the day after the MBLL worker walkouts began.
At his store, he says, it only takes a week to run out of all the most popular brands and price points.
“It really only takes one missed order and then you’re out of all of your-top selling stuff,” says Schmitke. “That’s how this industry works. We order on demand, so we order just what we need to [carry us through until] our next order.”
Three weeks without the arrival of new stock at YGP means that many shelves are nearly empty. The only items that remain are spirits which are less commonly consumed and alcohol with price points that make them less attractive to the average consumer.
He takes some comfort in knowing that he’s not the only liquor retailer that isn’t getting supply shipments. When the scarcity is prolific, he says, people stop running to other stores looking for their favourite brands and instead buy the items that remain, regardless of price or brand.
To date, Schmitke says that his liquor sales haven’t really been affected. However, in just a few days he anticipates the balance of his stock will be as good as gone. At that point, he expects to see a significant drop in his overall bottom line.
For beer drinkers, the picture is less bleak—at least for now. Most of the popular beer brands in Manitoba aren’t distributed through the MBLL warehouses, so they aren’t directly affected by the strike.
This means that, for Schmitke and other beer vendors, selection of all the usual brands is as good as it’s ever been. He predicts, though, that if the government and union members don’t reach agreements soon, beer supply will be affected too, once the wine and spirit options have disappeared.
“The beer [distributors] order product months in advance based on assumptions of what they’re going to sell, which is based on sales trends,” says Schmitke. “So when sales spike precipitously, the warehouses are going to run out of inventory because they didn’t order anticipating that their sales would suddenly double.”
In the end, Schmitke is a grocer first with a side business of alcohol sales, which provides assurances that he and other private retailers will be okay regardless of the length of time the stalemate continues.
“There isn’t enough [profit] in liquor for a private retailer to only sell liquor, which is why, in rural Manitoba, they all sell other things.”
Restaurants, Weddings and Special Events
Schmitke says that he senses the obvious disappointment when his customers can’t find their favourite bottle on his shelves. Still, there are others that provoke an even deeper sense of chagrin.
“The people that this is affecting the most are the people hosting an event like weddings and socials,” Schmitke says. “People come into my store and say, ‘My wedding is in two months. What do I do?’ And I say, ‘You hope the strike ends.’”
They are really left completely optionless, he says, since Manitoba law restricts liquor permit purchases to Manitoba products only, making cross-border shopping an impossibility.
Rob Manchulenko is head of hospitality and support services at the Niverville Heritage Centre. Within the same building, he oversees the licensed restaurant Hespeler’s Cookhouse and Tavern as well as the Heritage Event Centre, which caters to weddings and large events all year round.
Alcohol sales for both of these businesses is an important component of their operations.
“Right now we’re not in [a desperate] position,” Manchulenko says. “We try and think ahead on what these [strike situations] are going to do. We’re not yet in panic mode where we need to cancel any [events], but that could change in a few weeks… If the distribution centres can’t get the product where it needs to go, then we’re sunk.”
The Heart of the Dispute
According to the MGEU, approximately 1,400 MBLL workers have been without a new contract since March 2022.
To compensate for inflation, the union is asking for wage increases that match those which Premier Heather Stefanson promised to herself and her cabinet: 3.3 percent in 2023 and 3.6 percent in both 2024 and 2025.
“MBLL is a very profitable corporation,” said Ross. “It can afford fair and reasonable wage increases for its workers. After working through the pandemic and the violent thefts epidemic, liquor workers have earned fair wage increases—like those that Premier Stefanson and her cabinet ministers are taking for themselves.”
What the province is offering is a two percent increase every year over the next four years. If the deal becomes ratified, the hourly starting wage for MBLL employees will also go up, bringing it to $2.38 more per hour than Manitoba’s minimum wage.
As well, signing bonuses are being offered that range from between $600 to $1,000, depending on the number of hours worked in the previous year.
“We tried hard to avoid a full strike, but Premier Stefanson’s stubborn commitment to restricting wage increases for frontline workers to just two percent has left us with no other option,” Ross said. “Only Heather Stefanson can resolve this situation by simply lifting her unfair wage mandate and allowing Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries to negotiate fair wages for their staff.”
