Re: Privatization should lower liquor costs, (Letters, Sept. 14)
The writer states: “the lower costs of distribution and warehousing after privatization would in theory, be passed on to the consumer.”
The lower costs would be achieved by hiring staff at much lower wages and fewer benefits than the current unionized workforce.
In practice, what happens with privatization is that the savings will end up as profits and fat salaries for the lucky recipient who’s given the business. A ripe plum ready for picking indeed.
What government will achieve by privatizing is to replace reasonably well paying jobs with wages barely adequate enough to live on.
These workers are part of our neighbourhoods. They contribute to our communities and they spend their paycheques in the community. Their loss is our loss.
If we want lower liquor prices, there is a better way to achieve it than the faint hope that some of the savings accrued by getting rid of unionized workers might theoretically trickle down.
Trickle down simply doesn’t work. The biggest cost in the price of liquor is taxation.
As anyone who travels south for the winter knows, the liquor consumed in the U.S.A. or Mexico at happy hour is much cheaper than it is here.
A drop in liquor tax would translate directly to the consumer as a cost saving. The wage-busting and profit-maximizing goal of privatization will not.
John Paterson
Saanich