If you’re upset you can’t buy alcohol due to a strike, blame the NDP and their ‘union friends’ – this from the minister for Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries (MBLL).
Reports indicate Andrew Smith made the comments in a post to the Progressive Conservatives social media site last Friday. He says the Opposition prevented passage of a government bill that would have allowed more private liquor sales. The NDP says they nixed the legislation because it needed more study.
About 1,400 Liquor and Lotteries workers, who’ve been without a contract for more than a year, started a province-wide strike last week closing liquor outlets across Manitoba including in Brandon.
Meantime, MBLL has reportedly accepted a conciliator’s proposal to end the labour dispute through an arbitration deal on wage increases, but the union doesn’t like that idea.
The Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union says binding arbitration ‘could take more than a year’, and that’s ‘unnacceptable’.
