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Liquor board members plan privatization fightback campaign.
Vancouver (30 May 2012) - Some 30 activists from National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) Components employed by provincial Liquor Boards met last week to strategize and plan fightback campaigns against privatization.
Two government's - B.C. and P.E.I. - are planning to privatize liquor sales. In P.E.I. the government is closing the liquor store in Wood Island, in favour of convenience and grocery stores sales. The PEI Union of Public Sector Employees (PEIUPSE/NUPGE) are opposing the move.
In B.C., the Liberal government recently made a surprise announcement in the spring budget to privatize its Liquor Distribution Branch (LDB) and sell off LDB's three warehouses. The B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union (BCGEU/NUPGE) represents over 500 LDB warehouse workers who will be affected by the government's privatization plans.
In the past five years, the LDB and its public retail stores have provided the B.C. government with revenue of $4.3 billion to pay for public services and programs.
The BCGEU/NUPGE has organized a Fightback Campaign Committee to stop the LDB privatization. These members attended the NUPGE meeting to get advice and learn from other Liquor Board union activists from across the country who have successfully fought off liquor privatization in several provinces over the past two decades.
“NUPGE Components have a wealth of collective experience in successfully fighting liquor privatization,” noted NUPGE National Secretary-Treasurer Larry Brown, who chaired the meeting. “We want to ensure that our BCGEU members were able to benefit from that experience and that's one of the main reasons we're meeting here in Vancouver.”
Out of the blue and without public consultation, the government's announcement has been driving speculation the Liberals are paving the way to privatize B.C.'s 197 public liquor stores.
The motives of the unpopular Clark government seem suspicious. In the dying days in office, the government announces this rushed privatization scheme without any justification or business case. The entire process is scheduled to be completed by October 2012, just before the spring election. Further clouding the issue is the public impression that the frontrunner company in the bidding process is Excel Logistics which employs two prominent B.C. Liberal insiders as lobbyists.
NUPGE
The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is one of Canada's largest labour organizations with over 340,000 members. Our mission is to improve the lives of working families and to build a stronger Canada by ensuring our common wealth is used for the common good. NUPGE