June 17, 2011_NWLP 6/14/11 10:10 AM Page 2
Rogue Ales puts chill on Teamsters Union campaign
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Workers at the Rogue Ales brewery
have plenty of reasons to unionize,
says Chris Muhs, secretary-treasurer of
Teamsters Local 324.
For starters: Base pay for most of
the 29 workers who produce and bottle
beer at Rogue’s Newport, Oregon, craft
brewery is Oregon’s $8.50-an-hour
minimum wage. Bonuses of a dollar or
more an hour are added, but are unpre-
dictable and irregular, and workers
don’t know how the bonuses are calcu-
lated. Minimum wage pay makes the
company’s 401(k) match not very
meaningful, and it makes it hard for
workers to afford what even the com-
pany admits — on its website’s jobs
page — is “bad health insurance.” Em-
ployees can pay over $800 a month for
family coverage. To top it off, Muhs
says, Rogue Ales has a habit of firing
and rehiring workers, and posting and
changing schedules with little or no no-
tice.
Muhs learned all this spending time
with brewery workers after he got a
call from bottling line worker Rodrigo
Alruiz.
Alruiz had his own complaint: He
says when he agreed to serve as crew
leader, he was promised a $1-an-hour
raise, but didn’t receive it. But what
provoked him to call the Teamsters
was a January 2011 company meeting
at which a brewer was fired in front of
everyone else for having made sopho-
moric comments on a “letter of ac-
countability.” Employees had been
PAGE 2
made to write the letter after some pro-
duction mistakes. Alruiz says he re-
members the boss’s exact words:
“F*** off. You’re fired.”
“It was the most disrespectful thing
I ever saw,” Alruiz told the Labor
Press.
Word among co-workers, Alruiz
says, was that two employees had tried
to unionize several years before, and
were fired by the company. Alruiz,
who is 37 with a wife and two kids,
knew he was taking a risk to call the
Teamsters.
But his brother-in-law had been a
Teamster at UPS. When he was side-
lined by a life-threatening ailment and
UPS tried to cancel his health cover-
age, the Teamsters fought and won
continuation of the benefits. Alruiz
called his brother-in-law’s union local,
and they referred him to Muhs at Local
324.
Alruiz talked with co-workers dur-
ing breaks. After two months, 17
Rogue workers had signed union au-
thorization cards. Muhs held meetings
with workers in late February and
early March. On April 25, Local 324
filed a request for a union election to
be supervised by the National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB).
A week after filing the petition,
Rogue Ales suspended Alruiz for two
days, ostensibly for arguing with a co-
worker. A week after that, it fired two
of his friends, also union supporters.
By now, Rogue Ales was repre-
sented by attorney Todd A. Lyon, from
the Lake Oswego-based management-
side labor law firm Williams Zografos
& Peck. Lyon formerly represented
Teamsters at a worker-side labor law
firm in Seattle. Now he represented
Rogue, leading mandatory anti-union
meetings.
Local 324 protested the firings, and
filed a charge that’s being investigated
by the NLRB.
Meanwhile, deploying a standard
legal tactic by employers, Rogue Ales
objected to Local 324’s idea of who
should be in the union, and proposed
that drivers and receiving department
workers be added to the bargaining
unit. The union consented, and an elec-
tion was scheduled for June 6.
In mandatory workplace meetings,
workers were subjected to all manner
of anti-union arguments. Teamsters
know trucking, but not beer, Lyon ar-
gued. [That’s ridiculous, Muhs says:
Though Salem-headquartered Local
324 is a general local representing
1,500 workers from warehouses to mu-
nicipal governments, the Teamsters
union represents brewery workers in
other locales.]
But the anti-union meetings had an
effect. The week before the scheduled
election, Muhs received a petition,
signed by 21 workers, saying they
don’t want to be represented at this
time. After verifying the signatures,
Muhs respected their wish, withdraw-
ing the election petition.
One factor in the change of heart,
Muhs says: Much of the union’s initial
support came from less senior workers
on the bottling line. Some well-re-
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
spected better-paid and more senior
workers felt blindsided on learning of
the union campaign, and appealed to
younger co-workers to give the com-
pany six months to show it can be a
better employer. Now it will get that
chance.
The week after the election was
canceled, Alruiz says, Rogue Ales
served birthday cake for a brewery em-
ployee, something he had never seen
before.
By all accounts, Rogue is a success-
ful enterprise, with a spreading empire
of pubs, micro-distilleries, tasting
rooms, and a B&B: Besides three loca-
tions in Newport, it has pubs in San
Francisco, California; Issaquah, Wash-
ington; Astoria and Eugene, Oregon;
and four sites in Portland — in the Pearl
District, at Portland International Air-
port, “Rogue Hall” adjacent to Portland
State University, and the Green Dragon
in Southeast Portland.
As it has grown, the company has
staked its brand on the “rogue” image.
Though Merriam-Webster says a rogue
is a “dishonest or worthless person,”
Rogue Ales’ web site offers its own def-
inition — an honest, hard-working risk-
taker and rebel. But when its minimum
wage brewery workers took risks to
rebel and seek out a union, Rogue
lawyered up and fired two of them.
“Rogue is not for everyone,” says
the jobs page on Rogue Ales’ web site,
which adds the company’s opinion that
“job security is a myth,” and “senior-
ity is not fair.”
The Labor Press wanted to know: Is
there something about the proud tradi-
tion of trade unionism that clashes with
the company’s “rogue” ethos? Seeing
“absence of bullshit” among the “un-
alienable rights” enumerated in the
company’s “Rogue Nation” fan club
manifesto, the Labor Press contacted
Brett Joyce for some straight talk about
the company’s campaign against the
union. Joyce did not respond.
Rogue: To buy or not to buy
When the Labor Press reported June 3 that an unfair labor practice charge
had been filed — alleging that Rogue Ales fired two workers for supporting
a union campaign — it came to the attention of International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers Local 48 Business Manager Clif Davis.
The news put Local 48 in a tricky spot. Davis was getting ready to final-
ize a large order with Rogue for a custom-brewed beer to be served July 10
at Local 48’s 100th anniversary celebration. Davis called Teamsters Local
324 Secretary Treasurer Chris Muhs to ask if Local 48 should cancel the or-
der.
Rogue workers need a union, Muhs said, but that decision, as well as any
call for a boycott, would be up to the workers themselves. Consequently, Lo-
cal 324 is not boycotting Rogue Ales at this time.
Davis went ahead with the order, but sent a letter to Rogue putting the
company on notice that Local 48 would have honored a boycott if the Team-
sters had requested it, and that future union business could depend on the
company’s conduct.
As a result, Local 48 members can toast their union for 100 years of main-
taining the honor and dignity of working people, while the workers who
made the beer can know that if they decide to unionize, their brothers and sis-
ters in the union movement will have their back.
JUNE 17, 2011