OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas has dismissed assurances from LCBO President and CEO George Soleas that “products are flowing into the warehouses and products are flowing into the stores. The stores are really ready for business.”
Click here to watch the CTV Barrie video.
“He’s either very, very naïve or just absolutely lying to the public,” Thomas told CTV reporter Craig Momney. “I don’t know which it is. I’d like to think he’s not a liar, but somebody’s not telling him the truth.”
The comments from Soleas and Thomas come in the wake of a disruption in supply to the LCBO’s 240 stores. The Crown agency updated its Legacy technology at its Durham Retail Service Centre in June – another failed software that employees had warned management about and which Soleas characterized as “communication issues,” claiming most of them have been fixed or are being fixed.
But Thomas wasn’t buying it. “In the Markham area, for example, only three stores out of 28 are fully stocked,” he told CTV. “The rest have empty shelves.”
LBED Chair Jennifer Van Zetten sent photos from the Barrie store featured in the video to back up Thomas’s contention that the supply problem is far from “fixed.”
“The pictures reflect that the employees are told to ‘face up’ the stores and extend the product to make the shelves look full,” she noted.