Liquor store will be union test case

By Dan Hilborn
Published Oct. 12, 2005


The private liquor store that opened in the Royal Oak Plaza last year is turning into a test case in the B.C. Government Employees' Union battle against privatization.

The union filed an application with the B.C. Labour Relations Board last week to gain legal successorship rights at the West Coast Liquor Company store, which opened in the same location with the same colour schemes and same in-store design as the former government liquor store that had just closed one month earlier.

"There's an old saying that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck," union president George Heyman said in a press release issued Oct. 5. "These operators are continuing the same business in the same location, with the consent and support of the provincial government. Under the law, the BCGEU therefore has the right to continue to represent workers in that store."

Steven Howard, a communications officer for the union, said the battle to represent workers at the Royal Oak store will be the first of many successorship applications to go before the board.

"We have petitions on liquor stores coming out our ears," Howard said. "We're dealing with a whole series of closures including a store in Kamloops that was targeted for closure last month when we got a promise from the government in January that it would not close at all. That promise was broken."

Last year, the BCGEU collected 85,000 names on a province-wide petition opposed to liquor store closures. At the Royal Oak store specifically, the union collected about 1,500 signatures in an attempt to keep the government operated outlet open.

"It is our hope that we'll be successful with this successorship application and put a halt to this kind of cozy relationship between the LBD and private operators where stores close and miraculously reopen with the same furnishings and same signage," Howard said. "That's our goal, the ensure the laws around successorship are followed."

While Burnaby mayor Derek Corrigan said city hall will not get involved in the successorship battle, he does support the believe liquor stores should stay within the government service.

"I think liquor stores should be in public control," he said. "Liquor is a substance that should be guarded carefully and public employees have done an excellent job with that, but there are concerns with private distribution."

Corrigan said that a recent report from the Alberta chiefs of police has pointed to the privatization of liquor stores in that province as being directly responsible for an increase in impaired driving charges and a proliferation of new liquor outlets. "One cannot have information like that and then not consider it when trying to avoid the same problem in their own community," he said.

In an attempt to deal with some of those concerns, Burnaby recently enacted a bylaw that imposes certain conditions on private liquor stores, that are different from those affecting public liquor stores, he said.

"We're trying to avoid having a single person working at the store, which we believe will make the store more susceptible to crime," he said. "We're probably the only municipality in British Columbia that has aggressively tried to deal with the issue with our zoning bylaws."

"When you're dealing government to government, you have an agency that is equally accountable to the public, but a private operation has different incentives and in my view, needs a little more control."