‘They freaked out’: How a deal to end the LCBO strike almost fell apart at the last minute

The night had come and gone and the first lights of early morning were on the way when the LCBO and its striking union came to an agreement they felt they could sign on Friday morning.

Talks were finally going well between the two sides, who were finally speaking after two weeks of almost no contact during a province-wide liquor store strike.

Talks finally resumed on Wednesday, July 17, 12 days after the first strike in the LCBO’s 97-year history began.

The two sides returned to the table that day and negotiated into the night. The next day, Thursday, they returned and talks continued again — they finally began to find common ground and a deal was eventually agreed.

Colleen MacLeod, OPSEU’s LCBO lead, told Global News talks went “late into the night” on Thursday and wrapped around 4 a.m. on Friday, with the Crown agency and the union optimistic everything was ready to formally be announced.

“We said, ‘Look, we’re there, we’re almost there, we’ll look at the language and solidify everything in the morning, also we have to do this return-to-work protocol,’” MacLeod said.

The return-to-work protocol — which OPSEU president JP Hornick described as “standard practice in negotiations — is an agreement for how striking workers will come off the picket line and back into stores.

Hornick said it included logistical agreements like which workers would return to their shifts first and how they would get access to computers or keys. The protocol also featured the request of backpay for workers who had been on strike for more than two weeks.

The union said that request was a normal part of negotiations and the proposal itself could be countered by the LCBO.

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“Next morning, we get up, we sign that collective agreement, we sign the tentative agreement and we give the employer our return to work protocol for negotiations,” MacLeod continued.

“At that point, we thought everything would just work — they would counter-propose, we would propose and we would get this done, quickly wrapped up, within maybe a half an hour. All of sudden, we heard they were making some announcement about an unfair labour practice and I was stunned.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford — whose government has arms-length control of the LCBO as a Crown corporation — said things progressed very differently.

Speaking at an event on Monday, the premier said he was in Windsor-Essex when the LCBO and the OPSEU finally came to an agreement. Ford said he found a nearby picket line to tell the workers out on strike that “we got a deal.”

As the premier was sharing the news with LCBO workers, he said the deal fell apart.

“All of a sudden, surprise surprise, never in Canadian history that I’ve heard… they rescind the deal and they come back after it’s signed,” Ford remembered, claiming he had spoken to 500 workers over the duration of the strike.

“And they’re saying, OK, now since we signed this deal… we want them (the workers) to get paid for two weeks. I say, ‘The people would lose their minds.’ Imagine if that’s taking your tax dollars for paying people that weren’t working. It’s absolutely crazy.”

The spat over backpay and a return-to-work protocol put the deal in danger of collapse.

Hours after both agreeing to a deal and extolling its virtues in public, the LCBO and OPSEU were sniping at each other. They accused one another of bargaining in bad faith and fundamentally misunderstanding the process.

MacLeod told Global News she felt the LCBO had “freaked out” over the return-to-work proposal by threatening to file an unfair labour practices complaint.

“I don’t know if it’s that they didn’t understand that this had to be done because they’ve never been on strike before and why they reacted that way, I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt there,” she said.

Ultimately, the union dropped its request for backpay in the return-to-work protocol, which was signed by the two sides.

“So, finally, they came to their sense, the leadership came to their senses, and we got the deal signed, people are back at work and everyone’s going to have a great summer,” Ford said.

MacLeod said the union was always willing to reconsider its stance on backpay for striking workers but felt they had to ask. She said the response it triggered came as a shock.

“That’s what we were looking for is: hey, are they interested in doing the right thing and maybe compensating for a few days or whatever the case may be… all they would have had to do is say, ‘No’ and counter-propose and everything would have been fine,” she said.

LCBO staff returned to work on Monday and stores are set to reopen across Ontario on Tuesday.

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