Brewbound Frontlines: Union Efforts at Craft Breweries

Justin Kindle [00:15] Welcome back to Brewbound Frontlines, our biweekly check-in with beer industry leaders on the major issues they're tackling. My name is Justin Kindle, and I am the editor of Brewbound. And joining me, as always, is my Brewbound tag team partner Jess Infante. Jess, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2 [00:32] I'm good, Justin. How are you?

Justin Kindle [00:34] I'm good. Are you ready for Brewbound Live?

Speaker 2 [00:39] Yes, maybe

Justin Kindle [00:40] that's a lie. Neither am I.

Speaker 2 [00:43] Good, I'm glad I'm not

Justin Kindle [00:44] alone. Brewbound Live is our annual business conference. It is coming to you on December 14th and 15th this year. We are doing it all virtually. Join us for this subscriber event to hear from leaders at New Belgium, Denizens Brewing, Nielsen, Five Drinks, Go Puff, and more as we get them confirmed. That's just a few of the names so far, and Jess and I will be holding it down for that. With that out of the way, let's get to today's show. Like it or not, the craft brewing industry is just like every other industry. The cachet of working at a brewery is often tamped down by low wages, long hours, and unsafe working conditions, as videos of tank overflow of tank overflows posted to social media too often remind us. Not to mention the pandemic is real and cases of COVID-19 continue to spike across the country, leaving consumer facing employees too often in precarious positions. This September, in the face of some of those conditions, hospitality workers at Surly Brewing's Minneapolis taproom began organizing. Two days later, Surly said it would close its beer hall. Surly admitted the timing of the announcement looked bad, but the company claimed it would lose mid-six figures if the location remained open. Nevertheless, Surly's workers received a union election in November, which fell 11 vote short of passing. Efforts to unionize were more successful at another Minneapolis craft brewery. Fair State Brewing Cooperative management recognized Fair State Workers Union, which the company said made it America's first unionized microbrewery. With around 8,275 craft breweries in the US, why aren't more craft breweries union shops? Let's discuss. Here today are Evan Sale, CEO and co-founder of the aforementioned Fair Fair State Brewing Cooperative in Minneapolis. Thanks for being here, Evan. Thanks for having me. Also joining us today is Patrick Mockel, bartender and shop steward at Anchor Brewing in San Francisco. Thanks for being here, Patrick.

Speaker 3 [02:59] Also, thanks for having me.

Justin Kindle [03:00] And finally we have Dave Infante, editor of Fingers, a newsletter about drinking culture, being online, and beyond. Based out of Charleston, South Carolina, and I don't believe related to Jess Infante. Thanks for being here, Dave.

Speaker 4 [03:15] Yeah, we're not related as far as we can tell. I think we're both from the same part of the country and actually, yeah, grew up going to high schools that were like sister and brother schools. So go figure. I'm glad to be here.

Justin Kindle [03:28] I think we need a 23andMe to figure out if you two are actually related or not.

Speaker 2 [03:33] So I really think if you look deep enough into our family trees, you probably have a bunch of the same cousins, so.

Speaker 4 [03:39] Yeah, that's an entirely different show though, right? That'll be more of a reality focused, you know,

Speaker 2 [03:45] we'll do that one next week.

Justin Kindle [03:47] Tune in to Brewbound Live and we'll get you to the answers to those questions and more. So let's, let's get started here, Dave. You've written pretty extensively about union efforts at craft breweries, so let's set this up. What percentage would you say of the 8,275 craft craft breweries in the US are union shops?

Speaker 4 [04:09] Almost none. I mean, I don't have the calculation uh done out, but I mean, we're talking about a vanishingly small percentage of uh of of the of the of the workshops of the breweries that are are across this country. I mean, None. Almost

Speaker 2 [04:24] none. So, the ideals of the labor movement, better wages, reasonable hours, safe working conditions, those all seem like things that craft brewing, you know, should align with, you know, and really everybody should align with those things. But, you know, craft breweries are just like other businesses, and I think in our industry having been, you know, on the other. Side of it too, you know, salaries do tend to be a little bit lower occasionally, and so there's sometimes no benefits for certain employees, um, definitely long hours for just about everybody. So, Dave, why do you think we haven't seen more workers organized at craft breweries? Do you think the pandemic is going to lead to more workers organizing in craft beer?

Speaker 4 [05:02] Man, I mean, it's a multifaceted, it's a good question. It's a multifaceted question. It's funny that you bring up the idea of like media not being a good work environment either, because I have heard, and this is sort of apocryphal, but I've always heard that like one of the reasons that when teachers go on strike or when teachers, uh, you know, like do work stoppages, they don't necessarily get a lot of sympathy out of like the newspapers that that cover those strikes because the journalists Also just as beleaguered and beaten down and said, man, like things suck for us just as much type of thing. I don't know if that's true or not, but generally speaking, sure, like there's there's bad working conditions in media. They don't quite stack up with, uh, I think, what craft brewery employees face. So, you know, like we see, and Patrick, I know can speak a lot more to this and Evan as well, but, you know, like there's a lot more physical strain. On laborers in the craft beer space, it is, you know, physical work. It's also arguably the brand or the attractiveness of working for a craft brewery exceeds that of working for a local newspaper or even working for a digital outlet, right? I mean, like it is, or at least was through most of this past decade, a very cool, a very hip, a very, you know, quote unquote sexy place to be working. So I mean, I think like those are some of the things that have drawn the workforce to the craft brewing space, and one of the reasons I think we haven't seen a lot of organizing, even though there are conditions that maybe are suboptimal, is because it's it's a very fractured and very difficult target for organizers, right? I mean, we talk about 8000 plus breweries across the country. These are often like very small shops. Um, where there are not, there's not a high density of, of workforce. There's relationships that exist that are like deeply personal between ownership and manage ownership and labor, and those lines get blurry, um, for folks who think they're sort of part of one big family, so to speak. So there are a lot of challenges that are, that are unique to this industry, or at least unique to, um, some of the like more craft services, uh, broadly, um, that I think, you know, have posed. An ongoing obstacle for organizers looking to make moves into the space.

Speaker 2 [07:24] It's funny that you bring up teachers because I know, and you and I have had these conversations, but I am married to one and he is uh the union representative for his district uh for the high school and and in the years that I worked at a very large craft brewery, he always had a higher salary than I did, and maybe that's a me problem, I don't know, but Um, so, Evan, I know Fair State recognized the, the workers union really quickly. You and I touched base on that back in September. So why do you think that was the right decision for the business and what considerations went into making that decision for your team?

Speaker 5 [07:58] Yeah, I think there was really a lot that went into it, you know, from our perspective, you know, from the beginning we've always tried to ask ourselves how can we be better at, you know, serving our team, serving our employees, and serving our community, you know, we've really strove, strove to do things, or at least not do things that a lot of other breweries do, like, you know, we don't hire free labor and. Like that. But beyond that, we've tried to push further. We offer 4 weeks of paid vacation to all of our staff. We offer healthcare to all of our full-time staff and retirement benefits and things like that. And really I think if you go back to the beginning, um, you know, myself and our co-founders have really thought about how do we build this as the kind of place that we would want to work at and and how do we give them. Those kinds of benefits to all of our staff. So to a certain degree, um, this really feels to me is just kind of the next step of our evolution, you know, we as a cooperative are kind of built on democratic principles and a lot of managing democracies, managing democratic principles, uh, relies on understanding the various stakeholders that are at play and the kinds of You know, institutions that allow those voices to be heard and from my perspective, adding a union into this mix was a really powerful way to kind of push that democracy really to the next level, giving employees a formal way to organize, a formal way to have a seat at the actual table so that they can kind of bargain with management. You know, our staff was extremely thoughtful, I think, about the way that they came to it. Uh, they understand that a lot of the things that they have, uh, you know, are things that they want and things that they want to keep, and they came to it, uh, because they want to see Fair State succeed and they want to have a say in understanding, uh, in, you know, dictating, I guess, how that is going to happen. Make sure that they're going to be a part of that success. And so, um, you know, because they came to it in such a thoughtful way, it was a little easier, I think, for us to recognize what they were doing, to understand that what they were doing really was kind of this, you know, independent push for democracy that is the kind of thing that we've been preaching, you know, for the past 6 years. So. You know, when they, uh, you know, that I think it was a Monday, they uh sat me down and, um, you know, asked for a meeting and I went in and uh talked to them and they, you know, made their ask and I said, you know, we gotta, I can't say yes right now, but we're gonna uh take a look at this. Uh, so we went and we had a conversation with our leadership team. Uh, I called a meeting with our board of directors. Uh, again, you know, our board of directors is made up of our uh member owner consumers, uh. So you know, they kind of have uh a pretty substantial voice in how this business is run as well. Uh, but we were able to kind of pretty quickly come to the conclusion that uh as I said, this is just kind of the next step. Uh this is something that we think could be really powerful for us uh as a voice in this industry uh to show that there are ways to kind of run a business that works better for everybody and uh that's kind of always been a big part of what we're trying to do here.

Justin Kindle [10:55] Patrick, the effort at Anchor was more of an uphill climb for you and your colleagues. Uh, you all faced union busting tactics. Can you share a little bit of what that experience was like?

Speaker 3 [11:07] Yeah, um, We, we were kind of split a lot of the time with certain people, right? Anchor has been around since 1896, so it's an old craft brewery. We were kind of the founders of the craft movement back in the 1970s. Um, the guy who was started that was Fritz Maytag. And a lot of the people that have been there, have been there for decades, have worked under this guy, has seen changes in ownership, right? Like we've changed owners at least 2 or 3 times, so Poro was the last one, and that was kind of like what a lot of us younger folks that were coming in. Uh, seen as just like this isn't like we've worked for corporations before, we need to have our own voice. We need to make sure that we keep this culture alive that's been around since the 1800s, right? Um, a lot of the older folks did not like that cause they thought that we were coming in and destroying what they already had, not understanding that the corporation, it really just sees us as numbers on a piece of paper now. Um, so that was a lot of adversity and animosity between people, but we figured out a way to kind of, um, talk to them more and be more open about it and be more honest, and I think they like had a lot of respect for us for doing that. Um, with the union busting tactics, um, I think we kind of put anchor a little bit into a corner whenever we went public. Um, Dave, you could attest to this. We, um, let the story run free the moment we dropped the papers and everybody picked it up. And it was like every week there was multiple stories coming out. Anchors didn't know how to handle it, um, so it put them kind of in a corner that like, they were just like, we don't know what to do. So they decided to try and be neutral, but in a way they were kind of giving us half truths on what the union that we picked was, the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union, uh, specifically Local 6. So they would do these things called captive audience meetings where everybody that was working at the time. has to go to these meetings where we're talking to management, uh, department by department, and they're giving us these statistics of this is how much union dues are going to be, um, these are how much this is where your money is going in these political campaigns, all this stuff, like pretty much anything and everything they can find on the union to give us the more honest approach of what it would be to be part of it. Um, a lot of us are radicalized younger, uh, people. Some of us were in DSA, which is the Democratic Socialists of America, and we had a lot of, uh, help with those guys on strategies of what to do in these meetings. Um, and we actually like organized ourselves to like tell each other what was going on, so that way if like, for example, the bartending or the bar department. had something, uh, the captive audience meeting, we would know what it is because the production guys would tell us what their meeting was or filtration guys would tell us what their meeting was, or the tour guides, you know, so we were always in conversation with each other and we always had at least one person that actually spoke up against some of these statistics. Uh, I think in my specific department, a lot of people were still kind of like half and half on like what to do about this, but I would ask them, well, if we have these statistics, like how much are you guys getting paid? Where's the money from Anchor going? Like, where's all of the statistics for Anchor and My manager at the time was actually uh pretty much death staring me the whole time, but a lot of my co-workers saw they're like, oh shit, you could actually like uh speak to your managers in this way and like speak up for yourself cause everybody's so used to in the bar industry of just like turning the left cheek, you know, and just going on with it. And that kind of helped a lot of people out of understanding like this is our, this is our company, you know, like we are the product, right? Um, but yeah, like it, it was tough the whole time, and we always had to be in conversations with each other, and we actually helped us out in the end.

Justin Kindle [15:31] Was it difficult to maintain solidarity with your coworkers throughout that period?

Speaker 3 [15:37] Um, Not really. I think like I was pretty annoying with my coworkers. I was also working another job and going to school full time, so like my time was always just like to focus on what the union was and making sure That people honestly understood what they were getting themselves into, right? This is the first time I've ever been part of the union, first time I've ever actually had to learn about what unions were, and I wanted to make sure that my coworkers knew as much as I did. And if they didn't point them in the right direction. We had an awesome union organizer. His name is Augustin. He helped out Cesar Chavez back in the day. And is the main organizer for the ILW up in Northern California, and he is an encyclopedia of what's going on with unions and how um and would answer any questions if I didn't have the answers.

Justin Kindle [16:33] Dave, after seeing what happened at Anchor and the success there, as well as Fair State, I, I, I keep coming back to that, that question of why we don't see this more, but then after seeing what happened at Surly, I'm wondering if, if you see that as sort of a chilling event maybe for future efforts. How do you view it?

Speaker 4 [16:57] Yeah, I don't think there's another way to read it, besides a chilling effect, whether it was deliberate or not. I mean, there's, there's always going to be a gray area. Certainly management, you know, claimed that the timing was a total coincidence, um, which may be true. It's hard to look at the way that played out and not. Draw conclusions to the contrary. Certainly didn't respond to my inquiries when I was reporting on that, but their statements indicated, you know, like that they were claiming that there, you know, it was total coincidence. You know, Patrick and I spoke back when Anchor was was going, was going through its organizing drive and And going through what to an outside observer were pretty standard stock and trade union busting tactics at Anchor, you know, like retaining an outside law firm that's, you know, infamous for its anti-labor staff, holding captive audience meetings, etc. All of these things are from the same playbook, and what's interesting if you've ever been in organizing circles before, which I have, you know, kind of the moves, and it's remarkable across industries, whether it's media or teaching or brewing. Managers and ownership who choose to fight the union, which by the way is fighting their workers' federally protected rights to organize, they do the same things, right? And what we saw smash cut to mid 2020, what we saw at Surly, according to accounts from, I mean, I spoke with about a half a dozen workers who were on the ground at the at the Surly beer hall, driving, you know, doing that organizing drive with Unite here Local 17. We saw a lot of the same tactics play out, misinformation, um, you know, captive audience meetings, I believe. There was also a, unlike Evan, which sounds like, you know, you pretty quickly got with leadership and talked through it and then made your decision, there was kind of a drawn out process where workers were in the dark, not, not really clear on on what management was going to do, not really clear if management was even going to acknowledge their request to be recognized voluntarily. So yeah, I mean, I don't think there's, if you're realistic about about organizing and about like the way it works and the way this industry works and observes types of things like that, I don't think there's any way to see that besides chilling. I don't think it's a fatal blow to the labor movement within the craft brewing or the craft spirits space, certainly not, but, but I think it is truthfully a setback.

Speaker 2 [19:41] So Dave, for brewery owners, um, aside from, you know, clearly the moral reasons, what incentive is there for brewery owners to recognize unions?

Speaker 4 [19:50] Well, I mean, I'm, I'm curious to hear Evan's take on this as well, and I think it's so cool, like just for anyone who's not aware of the differences between Fair State and Anchor, like we have some really interesting sort of like, you know, data points on the spectrum in this conversation, right? Like Anchor, very old, owned now by an international corporation, you know, like has this brand that's you know. Deeply ingrained with with San Francisco, um, you know, Fair State, I think just about 6 years old, and much more focused on building a new economic model that's not, you know, probably not that familiar to the folks that that uh that do support those books, right? Like it's it's a totally different way of doing business, um, but Yeah, I mean, like brewery owners in the pandemic, understandably like it's a very, very stressful time for them, you know, people are watching their bottom lines. They're doing the P&L. They're not seeing like a lot of positive things as Brewbound and other outlets have reported on, but their staffers are, you know, arguably, or actually not arguably, they are almost by definition in. More precarious positions as wage earning laborers, and they may decide that they want to organize, which again is a federally protected right. They're allowed to do that. If, if you're a brewery owner and you get confronted by by your by your workforce that says, hey, we want, we want to form a union, we'd like to be voluntarily recognized, we would like you to recognize our right to bargain. Collectively, I mean, I'm no lawyer, so this isn't legal advice, but, and you know, like I've, like I said, been involved in organizing efforts before, so I'm certainly biased in that regard. But like my recommendation would be like say great, congratulations, that's your right to do so. We'll see you at the bargaining table. That's, that's, it's always an option. Brewery owners can do that if they want. I recommend that they do. If they choose not to, you get into tough territory because of craft beer's quote unquote brand with like the rank and file consumer. It's a very, it's perceived as a very progressive product. It's, you know, like pitched itself, not any one brewery, although certainly individual breweries pitch themselves on these lines, but as an industry, it's pitched itself and won a lot of fans with its Emphasis on, you know, its local ties and with its emphasis on commitment to quality and with improving the community, etc. etc. and those things are diametrically opposite from a an ownership exploiting labor, you know, relationship that's, that's much more adversarial. That doesn't sound like it's building the community that much. It maybe might make drinkers feel not so great about drinking the beer that comes from that brewery, and especially not if that brewery in Surly's case, you know, really advertised itself around giving back to the community. I mean, I think their slogan was Surly gives a damn, don't be a dick. Things like this that were, you know, sort of like ready-made as union slogans, honestly. But yeah, it can be, it can do damage to the brand's equity, right? Like even after it shakes out in Surly's case, it did not shake out in the workers' favor favor, which we'll talk about, I'm sure a little bit later in the show, but like, even, even if it shakes out positively, ultimately, and the ownership recognizes the union, um, The damage to the brand is, is substantial and like hard to recover. Like people remember that anchor, for example, was, was, you know, busting the union, and they don't, you know, they don't feel good about that brand in the same way, maybe.

Speaker 2 [23:33] So those are all really great points, Dave. I know Evan, when the staff at Fair State unionized, it was through Unite Here Local 17, which really focuses on hospitality workers, and they also had had a string in, you know, that month or so where they had unionized quite a few um coffee shops and distilleries and your brewery. So what was the feedback like from your consumers? Did you guys get any like feedback from the community? Were people supportive? How did that go down?

Speaker 5 [23:59] In the, I don't know, week or so after we announced the unionization, it was honestly overwhelming, uh, the positive feedback that we got from the community, um, tons and tons of people, uh, you know, certainly a lot of posting on social media of people, you know, being very proud to pick up a 4 pack. At the liquor store, we got a ton of people coming by the tap room and kind of congratulating our staff. Um, uh, you know, I think we expected to get some, uh, you know, positive feedback from the community about it, but it frankly just vastly exceeded my expectations.

Speaker 2 [24:32] Patrick, you were involved in unionizing uh quite a bit at anchor, but you guys belong to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which uh might be a little different from uh Unite here. So, and when you think of what people are have in their heads when they consider unions, how are, how does a union look different at a craft brewery than it might for, say, longshoremen down on the docks in San Francisco?

Speaker 3 [24:59] Yeah, um, well, We picked this specific union, right, because of its history in San Francisco, um, and like what it stood for, right? Like the ILWU is one of the last left unions left in the country, right? Um, and we've actually talked to a few other breweries that have been trying to organize, and they actually want to join the ILWU. It's only a West Coast union, you know. Um, so they, we kind of point them in the direction of like Teamsters or Unite here or um. I forget the other ones that they start with or whatever, but like we picked this specific union because of the freedom that it would have gave us. This is an extremely democratic union. There's a lot of elected positions for rank and file people to get into, as well as like with the whole contract that we made, it was all us. The, the lawyer was basically there to put in lawyer speak, right? Not all of us went to law school, so um She was able to kind of like sit in on some of the discussions that we had with a lot of our workers and like we just kind of like we're sharing beers together and talking about like, what do you feel about this? What do you feel about scheduling? Um, what do you feel about like, you know, tip pooling or whatever. And she would put it down, like write notes the whole time and like bring it to the bargaining table and we would talk about like, you know, bargain over what's going on with it, but she understood what we were coming from. And I think that was one of the more empowering things, especially with this union was that they weren't gonna come in and say like, for example, um, and this is no slide on Teamsters, but like Teamsters has a pretty strong hold on uh macrobreweries like Budweiser and stuff. Uh, they weren't gonna, they weren't gonna come in or whatever and tell us like This is our contract that we have with Budweiser, you could work off of that. We literally built the contract from the ground up, and that's empowering for a lot of our workers, and a lot of us are very proud with what we got on that contract. Now I'll be clear here and say like the first contract is always gonna be the worst contract, right? But it starts the foundation of where we can go from here. We put in a lot of like kind of soft language in there just to make sure that if we go to the bargaining table in 2 years, that we're ready if like things didn't work or did work, that we could uh expand or take back some things. Um, but yeah, like it, it's it like the union, honestly, the union that craft breweries picked. I would suggest that it's where their stand like standards are and like what they stand for, right? Then that's could vary from a whole bunch of different parts of the country, right? We picked this one specifically because it was one of the last, last left unions. They have a huge amount of history in the Bay Area and also it's awesome because longshoremen are hardcore people, so. When we bring them into our bar, management's always just kind of like, uh, we'll chill for a little bit, you know, which is one of the things like that we had like before pre-COVID, right? We had uh something called a drink-in where it was kind of a show to management how much community support we had, as well as making money for the company and the workers. One time, a whole bunch of uh Longshoremen came in, had the whole uh IOWU kind of like uh gear and stuff like that that has a cargo hook on it. So it looks pretty intense when big guys come in and they're just like, I want to get some craft beer and management wouldn't know how to handle it. They couldn't say anything bad about it. We're making them money, right? And it was kind of just like an interesting way to kind of, instead of going on strike or walking out or whatever, we're just like, we're gonna make you guys money and you guys are gonna have to like take all these guys, uh, these rank and file workers' money with the shitting, eating green, grin on. But yeah,

Justin Kindle [29:04] Patrick, uh, Dave mentioned something about an image hit that brands that fight union efforts undergo. Has the anchor brand bounced back from those efforts? How, how is it now?

Speaker 3 [29:19] Yeah, I mean, we made very sure. To a lot of our social media contacts and stuff like that, that we're not calling for a boycott. We know that the union or that they're trying to union bust, but we want people to pay for this beer. Like this is, like, if you pay for it, it's going into our pockets too, right? And we were trying to be very positive on it and I think that they did take a small hit, but it wasn't anything crazy. And now they're working with us because we got the contract and they can see the benefits of the union-made beer. Um, and they actually like starting with the Christmas sale, which we're pretty well known for on that, on the back label, it'll say Union Made in San Francisco, and every new beer from now on will say that on their bottles or cans, whatever they're putting on. So they understand like the union is a pretty big draw for people to come into it, especially since we were one of the first.

Speaker 4 [30:15] I think it's important to recognize also in the case of anchor, the market that they were talking to. I mean, San Francisco and the Bay Area in general has a strong labor history. The ILWU is, as Patrick said, a pretty historically significant union, um, and that's a sophisticated audience when it comes to labor issues. I mean, there's, there's so much, I think that like Rank and file Americans and you know, the drinking public by extension doesn't understand about organized labor in this country. Um, so I don't necessarily think that, um, you know, I'm glad to hear that Anchor didn't take I drink Anchor beer now that you guys won your won your won your drive and won your contract. I feel, I feel great about it. I'm a fan of the brand. I'm I'm happy to hear that the equity in that case, like signatures. have bounced back. I think in many other situations and in other markets where there's not that sophisticated understanding of labor, for example, I'm broadcasting this from Charleston, South Carolina, which is the least labor dense state in the country, that can get flattened and as such, the understanding of who did what and who's responsible for treating workers poorly. You know, can, can kind of get obscured in a way that may cause like broader and more long-ranging consequences for brands that choose to fight unions.

Speaker 2 [31:40] So Dave, I'm glad you brought a lot of that up, and I feel like Justin, maybe we should just have a writer on every week because he's definitely making our jobs easier today. But um Dave, you don't just write about beer, you write about, you've written about spirits, you've written about restaurants. Um, in your experience, how do labor conditions in those industries compare to the beer world and are there any parallels between them?

Speaker 4 [32:02] I mean, I think Certainly there are parallels, you know, like to take restaurants for example, it's a super, super fractured space. There's not necessarily a lot of, there's community within individual shops or within individual markets, you know, like for example, the Charleston F&B community is relatively close knit, but there's not necessarily sort of horizontal solidarity amongst those workers when it comes to Collective bargaining and economic benefit. So that's a challenge that the craft beer industry faces as well. Workers in the craft beer industry face as well, right? You know, spirits, I think, is another like very good analog just because of the similar nature of the operations. It's physical labor, you know, you're, you're building a product that can be consumed both on premise and off, but most of it's off. So I think there's similarities to like what those Workforces look like and you know the makeup of those those labor pools. I think like, you know, Unite here Local 17 at Fair State and the work that they're doing in Minneapolis is to a certain extent a blueprint for how food service and craft food service specifically may be organized in the future. I mean they've won a lot of success in that space in a way that, you know, is not just Focused on craft brewing, but it's really about taking the playbook of what worked at a place like Fair State or what worked at a place like Tattersall and saying, OK, what do these workers have in common and how do we then scale that out and find other shops, you know, other firms that fit that mold. Um, you know, I know that there's organizing efforts in Vancouver that are also having some success in the in the craft brewing scene up there that that then extends to craft distilling. So, um, restaurants are, I would say like more They are further outside the fold than craft distilling, you know, you have a workforce that is by its nature and also by design, frankly, much more transient. The back of house tends to be very, very precarious at the lower levels. Um, you know, there's also less maybe connection to product or, you know, like sort of like less investment in the actual product in the front of house. Workers are, you know, working for tips and they want to communicate good hospitality experiences, but don't necessarily then extend that allegiance to the plates of food that they're serving customers in a way that distillers or brewers are thinking about their beer as an extension of their brand and their craftsmanship. So I think that there's certainly like learnings to be taken from from other areas of the craft food service space, but you know, Also need to be realistic, um, and I'm sure any organizer would. These are hard spaces to organize. So, so the little bit of success that you've had is emboldening to organizers and, you know, proponents of labor in this country, but it's also important to keep an eye on where these, where these sectors of industry are compared to other industries, and like labor density in these spaces is very, very low.

Speaker 2 [35:27] I feel like the, the notion of having a product that we all make and serve together is certainly uh really impactful and really important to your culture. So Evan, I'm wondering how the culture at Fair State has, has changed, if it has at all. Do you think there's any difference in how everybody kind of relates to each other?

Speaker 5 [35:45] Uh, I can definitely say that I think morale has gone up since it happened. Uh, morale was certainly extremely high in the week after, uh, you know, we recognized the union. I think everybody was quite jubilant about it. Um, you know, we haven't entered really contract negotiations yet, so we certainly don't have one. So I think it's a little hard to say what, you know, maybe the, the long term effects are, are going to be here. Uh, but I, I, I think that it, it, you can just feel maybe a little bit of a new tone around work. I think, you know, folks were pretty nervous leading into, you know, uh, that, and so I'm sure there was a ton of relief, uh, that it went well. Um, and then, you know, I guess it's also just a little hard to disambiguate, uh, this from everything else that's going on in the world.

Speaker 2 [36:31] OK. And then when do you expect to enter those contract talks?

Speaker 5 [36:35] To a certain degree right now that is in the union's court. So you know we're kind of ready to enter as soon as they are. But you know, as I said earlier, I think that there are a lot of things that they're currently pretty satisfied with. I don't think that there are any enormous raging fires that they're looking to put out immediately. So I think they're just trying to be kind of diligent and patient and trying to make sure that they can kind of figure out on their end what they need.

Speaker 2 [37:01] So, I know one thing that, you know, we're all operating under this pandemic and it's certainly changed everything that, you know, we've known about working, you know, working and living like really across all industries, but um it presents working conditions that are gonna be challenging. So, I mean, Evan, have you had to work with the union at all to convey safety protocols? Have they made any asks in this regard?

Speaker 5 [37:24] You know, frankly, right now they haven't really made any asks. We try to be pretty transparent with our staff. Obviously we can always, I think, be better, be clearer about what we're doing, particularly when things are changing so rapidly all the time, um, but, um, you know, I think that's just to a certain degree right now the way we do things, or at least the way we try to do things, we try to always get better, but that hasn't been specifically in coordination with the union yet.

Speaker 2 [37:50] Well, and not to make this the Jess talks about her husband hour, but I know, you know, at least in my husband's school, they really needed to talk about how remote teaching went down, and I know his union in the beginning of the school year was pushing really hard for let's all stay full remote until, you know, case counts go down here in Massachusetts, and now they're working to make sure that classes will happen remotely after Thanksgiving week and holiday week because who knows, you know, where everybody has been. So, Patrick, how, how has the pandemic affected relations at Anchor? Have you guys had to have any conversations about safety protocols?

Speaker 3 [38:21] Yeah. Um, nobody was ready for this either, so we don't have a pandemic clause, which we're all talking about now. But, um, yeah, we've been meeting with them at least every 2 weeks to kind of just get an update on what's going on. Um, the bar, uh, is actually closed only for beer to go and we're only working on a kind of skeleton staff right now. Everybody's kind of in a weird limbo. Especially because San Francisco is one of the strictest cities in the country with the whole COVID pandemic, um, And, but we've been talking to them and like they've been kind of open of what's going on. Um, we've been trying to get more transparency on what the COVID procedures are, making sure that people are following the rules. Um, and they've been like 100% behind us as well. So it's been a kind of good working relationship in that regard. Um, we have, we were almost about to open up a couple of months ago and they were willing to, um, walk us through a presentation that they had. And have us, uh, like answer any questions that we had and make sure that everybody was like ready for this and that nobody was worried about coming back to work. Um, we've been kind of in a weird stagnation right now because of, you know, unemployment kind of running out, um, us not being able to open, no stimulus checks or whatever. And I mean, we're trying to keep people uh like up high in spirits, but it's kind of tough with everything that's going on in the world. And we're just glad that we could actually meet with management and make sure that they know that we're still here, like we'll still be talking to people. Like I call people every week just to kind of check in with them and make sure that they're doing OK. Um, and if they have any concerns that we could bring it up in these meetings, um, But it's tough. I mean, We're thankful that they're able to come to the table with us still. Patrick,

Justin Kindle [40:21] you mentioned that uh you're 1 year into your union contract. I, I think it's a 3-year contract, right? So when that comes due in 2 years, what are you going to say worked and what are you going to say didn't work?

Speaker 3 [40:38] There's a few things that we've seen that um just didn't make sense, but also we're kind of, we only had our contract for 3 months before this whole thing happened. So we still have another year to kind of figure it out. Hopefully, things get somewhat back to normal. I don't know. I You know, um, but I think that we're gonna start getting more people involved with it. Um, a lot of people, it was their first time ever doing something like this, so a lot of people were kind of just reserved and didn't know how to speak up or like didn't feel like they should speak up. And now after getting the contract and seeing how things work and um who's doing what and like how we can like file grievances and stuff like that, I think a lot of people are starting to kind of like Get an understanding of how our contract, our specific contract works, and we'll be talking to them a little bit more and like making sure that everybody is like involved again. But this time, actually have them come in instead of just saying like, we're at this bar, come up, you know, like we're gonna actually go in and like talk to them and see how they feel about certain things and just go from there.

Justin Kindle [41:50] Dave, uh, looking a little farther into the future, uh, the, the Economic Policy Institute reported that President Trump's National Labor Relations Board made it quote unquote, nearly impossible for workers to organize a union during the pandemic. How, if at all, uh, do you anticipate that will change in a Biden administration?

Speaker 4 [42:15] Let's see. I mean, I look, speaking candidly as someone who's observed this space for, for, I guess like the past 4 or 5 years, not just with regards to breweries, but just generally in American labor, the NLRB is not, is not necessarily the friend of organizing workers. It is unfortunately, oftentimes, even prior to the Trump administration really sort of stood it as an impediment. To, to organizing and and successful drives. So, yeah, did things get worse under Trump? Certainly, um, you know, the Janus SCOTUS decision, uh, I forget what year that was even, but that was a significant blow to labor as well. Look, the reality is like labor in this country has been beaten down for the past 4 to 5 decades, um, so, It's almost like, yeah, like there have been some bad blips most recently, but we're also, we're also ignoring, if we just look at those last 4 years of the Trump administration, we're also ignoring a huge downward curve that labor has experienced. So labor has undoubtedly been pushed on its heels in this country. That said, you still see workers like Patrick and his colleagues at Anchor organizing. You still see the workers at Fair State organizing like One thing that's not changing, uh, I think, is that, you know, work sucks, frankly, and people don't, don't want to do it. So if they have to do it, they want to be working in conditions that are favorable to them and at a wage that they believe is fair. Um, one thing that is changing is that workers have more tools at their disposal than ever before to create community outside of of the workplace, um, you know, like we're seeing, uh, you know, digital tools that we all have become. Super familiar with in the pandemic, like Zoom and and uh you know, like WhatsApp groups across different carriers and things like that, that you use to communicate with your workers can also be used as means to organize. Does the Biden administration change that? I don't know. I mean, like my politics aside, like Biden is not the radical leftist that he was painted to be in the, in the political ads from the Trump administration or the Trump campaign. I mean, Biden is a centrist and centrists and corporate Democrats like Biden aren't. Necessarily friends of labor either. So, um, does it change? Maybe it gets just a little bit better under Biden, but the reality is that labor has the, you know, this is a dumb, this is no pun intended, has the Trump card. If labor organizes, nothing, and they decide to stop working, nothing happens. Electoral politics does not matter nearly as much as the power that exists in a collectivized, organized labor force. So, Is Biden better, maybe slightly, um, but whether that, I, I'm very dubious that that really shapes the trajectory of labor in this country. What will shape it is more workers getting more educated and more involved, and, you know, coming together to make their voices heard, um, and using their federally protected rights to do so. Whether that's a Biden administration, Trump administration, or some other president, um, I don't think has that much of an effect.

Speaker 2 [45:31] Perfect segue, Dave. So Patrick, for employees who do want to organize, what do they need to know?

Speaker 3 [45:38] Um, be honest, you know, that's one of the clearest things, be honest and transparent. Don't make promises. That's a big thing not to do. You do not want to promise your workers we're going to make 25 bucks an hour, you know, and then have them be mad at you when it doesn't happen. Um, involve them as much as possible. I know that it can be annoying to talk to people all the time, especially now with the whole, uh, Having to meet on the internet kind of thing and having to call people, but involve them cause if they're not involved, they don't have, like they, they're not. Actively participating in what's going on, um, which is OK if they don't, you know, but just offer, offer them to come into it. Um. And Don't be afraid. Like, I'm sure like if people are like talking about unionizing and you have a core group that is ready to go, that you, you have a lot of outside community support, you could reach out to the anchor union account. We've been helping out a lot of underground campaigns during this whole thing, um, which you might see in a couple of months, two big ones in San Francisco. Um, but we're willing to like meet with people and like give them some advice. You always have outside advice, just Reach out to people um and your union organizers if you happen to go into that uh part super quickly. They're super knowledgeable and make sure that you challenge them as well. Like unions, we are the unions as well. People are, and we challenge a lot of the things that happen in the ILWU as well. Um, but, you know, that's it. Like challenge, make sure that you know how, you have the power. You are the power.

Speaker 2 [47:22] Great advice. Evan, for brewery owners whose employees might organize, what advice would you give

Speaker 5 [47:27] them? Yeah, there's a lot. I think, you know, the best thing you can do to start is just kind of try to be prepared, be open minded, try to leave your ego at the door, you know, I think as Patrick just said, it, it can be hard to understand or think about the fact that this is actually, I think, pretty scary for staff to kind of do this, and I think it's important to understand that from their perspective. You know, why, why are they doing something that they're scared of? I think it's the end nobody goes into this unionization conversation trying to take down your business. You know, they actually do it because they want to succeed and they want to be a part of that success. And uh I think it's really important to just kind of understand that that's where your staff are coming from. And even if you know, you've got your own priorities, I know a lot of, uh, you know. Breweries are kind of started by one or two people. They, they're really scrappy. They've owned everything, they've done everything, and it can be really hard to kind of bring another stakeholder into that conversation. Uh, but I think it's, it's, it is also equally important to understand like how are you going to get to where you want to go and how can this help you get there because I think, uh, it can really create a lot of power if you can harness it and So I think it it it is just important for owners to be able to kind of think about that a little bit more expansively. Uh, I think it is also, it's, it's pretty hard to find a good attorney who is able to help you think through this, uh, creatively. Um. You know, we talked a little bit earlier about, um, you know, attorneys and law firms that are kind of notorious union busters. You know, the fact is it's really hard for a company to find counsel who is can be open minded about this because counsel who work for unions will not work with us. And so, you know, the council that we're able to find, they're what they're used to is companies coming and offering that to pay them money to bust unions. And so I mean, frankly, well in advance of the union announcement, one of the things that I had done that I think is the thing that one of the things that set us up the best is that I had been looking for a creative counsel who could work with me creatively to understand how we could address this, and I had been looking for the right person for months before our staff ever actually announced their path to unionization. And I think having that person who was willing to work with me to think about that really helped set us up on the right path.

Speaker 2 [49:57] So what do each of you think that the drinking public doesn't know about working conditions at breweries, and what do you wish they knew? Patrick, let's start with you.

Speaker 3 [50:05] I don't know, like, there's a lot of intricacies with brewing, right? Like there's, with our specific location, there were a few things that were like safety concerns, like, one of them was, uh, at one point, like, because the staffing was kind of low, that there was only one person at the brewery at nighttime, um, which could be kind of dangerous depending on what you're doing, especially if you're like going into those big copper, uh, Oh God, what are they called? Tons or whatever, um, that we have in our brewery and like going up and down ladders and stuff. Um, and management didn't know, you know, like they weren't looking at it that way and it was us that kind of brought it up to them, uh, with just like, we're kind of worried about this or like, for example, um, customers, right? And how we deal with customers at the bar. And like not getting enough backup from management um in certain situations and just being very clear about like where do we draw the line on like kicking people out or like, I don't know, being um a bartender, like talking to people and stuff like that. Um there could be some concerns about people actually like creepers coming in and creeping on the uh the girls that were working and like we passed it out in the middle of our negotiations of what This kind of look uh looks like and then brought it up to their attention on things like that. Especially whenever you're doing like the bottling line and stuff like that. Like there's all these crazy like things that are moving all at once and like I mean, we can't force them to buy brand new equipment, right? That'd be kind of messed up, but for them to kind of understand, oh boom, that's what, that's what it was, training manuals, that's what it is. We never had training manuals before this, but we negotiated for training manuals. We got them to get the training manuals to us during the pandemic and kind of put their feet to the fire of saying like, we need these and we need designated trainers, and we need to understand what is what and like what to do if something breaks down or, you know, like anything, which um It's kind of surprising that we didn't have training manuals, but a lot of the knowledge was kind of passed down because we've been around forever, right? So a lot of it was kind of word of mouth, but now that we're having a more younger workforce, we don't have Fritz Maytag anymore. It's Sapporo that owns us. Like you're, you're gonna get people that come in that like either like don't know what's going on and the people that are teaching them don't really know what's going on. Um, and that could be dangerous, but now we have training manuals and designated trainers, so that kind of helps them out. Helps everybody else out.

Speaker 2 [52:46] That's wild, and I know, you know, the way we record, you can't see everyone's faces, but when Patrick said they didn't have training manuals, I think all of our eyes kind of bugged out a little bit. Um, Evan, what do you think your customers should know about what it's like to work at a brewery?

Speaker 5 [53:00] Uh, I think it's just, it's a lot harder than a lot of people, uh, recognize, you know, uh, it doesn't matter which part of the, the brewery you work in, you know, if, if you're actually working on the hot side brewery, you know, that's hot, sweaty, technical labor. If you're working on the packaging line, you know, you're dealing with complicated machinery that breaks down far more often than it should. Uh, if you're working in the taproom, you have to deal with unruly customers. You have to keep a smile on your face the whole time. You've got to be knowledgeable about every beer that we make. If you're working in sales, you know, you've got to be out there. You've got to figure out how to connect with people. It's, it's a real, it's a professional job, and I think a lot of people just kind of assume that we just kind of sit around and drink beer all the time. While we do love to drink beer, it's still a job, and we're professionals, and I think, you know, this industry is full. Of people who are passionate, full of people who are really creative and who bring that to the work and who are, you know, frankly kind of across the industry, underpaid and underappreciated, uh, and, you know, it's a fun thing to work in and it's a really amazing community to be a part of, but I really just don't know if, uh, you know, our customers really appreciate exactly how much talent is really in this industry and how much hard work is there.

Speaker 2 [54:12] Dave, I know you've interfaced it with a lot of consumers and you probably know a little bit more about what they do and don't know. What, what do you wish they all knew about what it was like to work in this industry?

Speaker 4 [54:22] I mean, something that I try to hammer home whenever I'm writing on these issues is that, and we said it at the top of this podcast, I mean, the beer, the craft beer industry is an industry, it is a business just like any other in many respects. Despite the fact that the product is a lot cooler and we all love it because it tastes great, that doesn't mean that the labor is not plagued by the very same issues that plague, you know, labor conditions. In any number of industries. So something that I'm always trying to communicate to both consumers and then also when I speak with workers sometimes, it's remarkable even how much workers have sort of internalized that assumption that no one wants to hear them complain about the dream job of working in a brewery, right? Like, well, no, I mean like this is, it's a job just like any other, and like I said, like one thing that's not changing is like work sometimes sucks and People need to be a lot, drinkers need to be a lot more aware of, you know, the idea that whether if you like a brand of beer, or you like a brewery in particular, um, just because their beer's good, that's great, but like, don't assume that just because they claim that they're connected to the community and that they, um, you know, that they, that they care about, you know, local first, and that they want to build a sustainable business, that they're extending those same. desires or privileges to their employees. And so I think it's really important to remember there are, you know, there are good companies and bad companies. There are good breweries and bad breweries. There's an old, you know, slogan in organizing, which is the companies that get unions are the ones that deserve them. And in some cases they're very happy instances like Fair State, and in others there are much more adversarial instances like Anchor, but There's a true spectrum amongst these businesses, and I think it seems like these days the sort of mirage or illusion that customers have is starting to wear a little thin on the industry and they're starting to understand a little bit more that you know that these businesses have troubles just like any other business.

Justin Kindle [56:30] And that's a good point to end this one on. That's our show for this week. Thanks to Evan, Dave, and Patrick for joining us. Thanks to all of you for tuning in. This is the final Frontlines episode of 2020, but don't worry, Frontlines fans, the series will return in 2021. Maybe you're saying, why so early? Well, we're preparing for Brewbound Live, our annual business conference on December 14th and 15th, and that's essentially 2 to 3 months' worth of front lines in 2 to 3 days. Also, we're putting together a new show, Brewbound Data Club, which debuts Thursday, November 19th. Drizzly director of brand, Liz Piquette will be here discussing e-commerce trends of beer, hard seltzer, and more. In the meantime, Jess and I will be recording a whole bunch of podcast episodes, so stay tuned for those in the coming weeks, and we'll see you on the 19th for Data Club.