PAGE 20 | August 18, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...Union-made beer
From Page 1
employers, but to support union
workers — and to use our buy-
ing power to send a market sig-
nal favoring “high-road” enter-
prises. The expectation is that
union-made goods are made by
workers who are paid fair wages
and benefits, and have rights and
dignity on the job. Production
workers at the Anheuser-Busch
brewery in St. Louis, Missouri,
for example, get $31.94 an hour
under their union contract, plus
health and pension benefits, paid
vacation and sick days, and two
free cases of beer per month.
Today’s U.S. beer industry is
dominated by two unionized or
mostly-unionized giants, with
hundreds of almost-totally-
nonunion craft brew competitors
nipping at their heels.
The giants are responding to
the craft threat by buying up
craft competitors, and by devel-
oping in-house varieties known
as “crafty” beers. AB Inbev has
acquired 10 regional craft beer
companies in the last six years,
grouping them in its “High End”
division. Molson Coors groups
its half-dozen craft acquisitions
in its “Tenth and Blake” divi-
sion. In each case, the craft ac-
quisitions came with nonunion
production facilities that con-
tinue to produce the brands they
produced prior to purchase. So
by and large, craft beers owned
by the big unionized companies
are still produced nonunion.
Beer company ownership
structures can get pretty compli-
cated. In 2015, the world’s
biggest beer company, AB In-
bev, announced a deal to buy the
world’s second biggest beer
company, SAB Miller, for $107
billion. The U.S. Department of
Justice — responsible for en-
forcing the “antitrust” laws that
are supposed to prevent monop-
oly — approved the merger, but
on condition that AB Inbev sell
U.S. rights to the SAB Miller
brands to another company. That
was achieved when Molson
Coors paid $12 billion for SAB
Miller’s stake in their joint ven-
ture, MillerCoors.
AB Inbev
AB Inbev is the world’s biggest
beer company. The AB stands
for Anheuser Busch, but today
it’s a foreign-owned corporation
headquartered in Leuven, Bel-
gium and Sao Paulo, Brazil. In
the United States, AB Inbev
owns 12 “mega-breweries,” all
willing to look: Bottles of union-
made Miller beer do say
“UNION MADE” in fine print.
Pabst
A century ago, union-made beer car-
ried a union-made label.
of which are union-represented
by the Teamsters. Those 12
breweries are responsible for
producing all of the company’s
nationally-distributed mass-
market beers. That means all va-
rieties of the following brands
purchased anywhere in the
United States were made by
union members at these 12
breweries: Budweiser, Busch,
Michelob, Natural Light,
Rolling Rock, and Shock Top.
The 12 breweries also produce
several of AB Inbev’s “foreign”
beer labels for the U.S. domestic
market — Beck’s, and Foster’s.
And it has a contract with a
Japanese beermaker to produce
Kirin for the U.S. market.
Molson Coors
Of the seven megabreweries
Molson Coors now owns out-
right, five are union-represented
and two are nonunion. Workers
at its breweries in Irwindale,
California, and Fort Worth,
Texas, are represented by the
Teamsters. At its Trenton, Ohio,
and Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
breweries, workers are repre-
sented by United Auto Workers
(UAW). And at its Albany, Geor-
gia, brewery, workers are repre-
sented by International Associa-
tion of Machinists. Its Golden,
Colorado, and Elkton, Virginia,
breweries are nonunion. Alto-
gether, Molson Coors employs
about 2,400 union members —
about 28 percent of its U.S. em-
ployees. But the fact that some
plants are union and some
nonunion makes it very tough to
know whether the beer you see
in a grocery store or bar is union-
made. Blue Moon Belgium
White is produced only at the
two nonunion plants, and Kil-
lian’s Irish Red is produced only
at the nonunion Golden plant.
But all seven Molson Coors
breweries produce Miller Lite
and Miller High Life, while all
but the Milwaukee and Trenton
plants produce Coors Light.
Hamm’s is produced by one
nonunion plant and three union
plants. One helpful fact for those
Among the big beer companies,
Pabst occupies a unique place:
It’s a beer company that con-
tracts out the making of its own
beer. For the most part, Pabst
beers are brewed under contract
by Molson Coors, but since two
of the seven Molson Coors
breweries are nonunion, the
same uncertainty applies to
Pabst-owned beers that applies
to Molson Coors beers. A Pabst
spokesperson told the Labor
Press “many” of Pabst’s beers
are made by union workers, but
provided no real specifics. A
spokesperson for Molson Coors
said confidentiality provisions in
its contract brewing agreements
prevent the company from pub-
licizing which brands they pro-
duce or which breweries they
utilize.
Lagunitas
Craft brewer Lagunitas — a
wholly owned subsidiary of
Heineken as of May 2017 — is
unionized at its Chicago brew-
ery, which employs 95 members
of Teamsters Local 727. Their
10-year first-time union contract
runs through April 2024 and
specifies wages from $10 to $32
an hour, health benefits, a
401(k), and workplace rights.
But Lagunitas’ Petaluma, Cali-
fornia, brewery, which produces
for the Western region, is
nonunion.
‘UNION MADE’
AB INBEV
BECK’S
BUD LIGHT
BUDWEISER
BUSCH
FOSTER’S
MICHELOB
NATURAL LIGHT
O’DOULS
ROLLING ROCK
SHOCK TOP
KIRIN
‘UNION MAYBE’
MOLSON COORS
COORS BANQUET
COORS LIGHT
EXTRA GOLD LAGER
HAMM’S
ICEHOUSE
KEYSTONE ICE
KEYSTONE LIGHT
LEINENKUGEL’S
MILLER GENUINE DRAFT
MILLER LITE
MILLER HIGH LIFE
MILLER 64
MILWAUKEE’S BEST
Mendocino Brewing
Mendocino Brewing Co. makes
Butte Creek organic beers and
Talon Double IPA. Fourteen
workers at it Ukiah, California,
plant are represented by Team-
sters Local 896 in a contract that
runs through July 31, 2018. But
its beers are also made at a
nonunion facility in Saratoga,
New York. It’s owned by an In-
dian businessman who lives in
the U.K.
Genesee Brewing
Workers at the Genesee Brewing
plant in Rochester, New York,
are represented by Teamsters
Local 118. Genesee is a sub-
sidiary of North American
Breweries, which is owned by
FIFCO Florida Ice and Farm
Company S.A., a Costa Rican
food and beverage company.
PABST BEERS
PABST BLUE RIBBON
RAINIER
OLYMPIA
COLT 45
OLD MILWAUKEE
SCHLITZ
LAGUNITAS
LAGUNITAS IPA
LAGUNITAS IMPERIAL STOUT
MENDOCINO BREWING
BUTTE CREEK ORGANIC
RED TAIL AMBER ALE
GENESEE BREWING
GENESSEE