Employees at two different Minneapolis craft breweries have attempted to unionize in recent weeks, with varying degrees of success.
Employees of Fair State Brewing Cooperative on Wednesday announced their decision to join Unite Here Local 17, a Twin Cities hospitality workers union, the same union that workers at Surly Brewing Company announced their intention to join last week.
Fair State CEO Evan Sallee “quickly agreed to voluntarily recognize the union” after consulting with the member-owned brewery’s board of directors, according to a press release.
“I am proud of the self-determination our team has shown by taking on the responsibility of organizing to make Fair State better,” Sallee said in the release. “This is one more step to building the business that we have envisioned from the beginning – one where workers and consumers each have a say and stake in a business, working together to build something beautiful and thriving.”
The union includes 22 of Fair State’s 36 employees — not all positions, such as supervisors, are eligible to join. It is “wall-to-wall and ecnompasses all areas of operations,” Sallee told Brewbound.
A week after Surly hospitality workers announced their intention to unionize, the company’s management has yet to recognize the union and the workers led a picket on Sunday that as many as 300 people attended, one Surly worker estimated.
On August 31, Surly’s front-of-house and kitchen workers announced their intent to join Unite Here Local 17. Two days later, Surly said it would indefinitely shutter its beer hall on November 2 due to the pandemic causing revenue at the venue to decline 82% year-over year and potential losses of $750,000 if the location continued operating into the winter months.
Workers called closing the beer hall was a retaliatory move. Sunday’s picket was organized to stand up “against union busting,” according to a Facebook event posted by Unite Here Local 17.
“A lot of people found out on social media that we were going to be closed indefinitely,” beer hall server Lindsey Alinder told CBS Minnesota WCCO during the demonstration. “I think that we should be a part of the conversation to try and make it better, rather than just completely being shut out by now being closed.”
Unite Surly Workers, the organizing group of Surly employees, are not asking consumers to boycott Surly products, but instead are calling supporters’ attention to other unionized local craft beverage companies, a group representative told Brewbound in an email.
“We are taking the time to fully support workers at places like Fair State Brewing, Lawless, and Stillheart Distilling, whose owners/management have voluntarily recognized their unions this week, and we have to assume more businesses will soon be coming forward with the same announcement,” the representative wrote. “All the while, Surly’s ownership/management has been very quiet towards the public about addressing the obvious issues.”
Two Minneapolis distilleries, Lawless Distilling and Stillheart Distillery, recognized workers’ joining Unite Here Local 17.
HAPPENING RIGHT NOW: @LawlessMN and Stillheart Distillery and Cocktail lounge workers are announcing their Union.
— UNITE HERE Local 17 (@UNITEHERE17) September 7, 2020
After announcing the beer hall’s impending November 2 closure, Surly shut down for service on September 2, “out of respect for the employees that were notified that in 60 days they would be laid off,” and paid scheduled employees for their shifts, a company spokesperson told KARE11 host Jana Shortal.
The planned closure of the beer hall came as a surprise to employees, who said beer hall managers had been interviewing candidates for open jobs and had recently invited past employees to return to work to fill available hours.
“They were in the hiring process of a lot of people; we had around 10 to 15 new people just start in the last few weeks,” Surly beer hall server and host Isabelle Rolfes told Brewbound. “I had no reason to believe that they were planning on closing the beer hall.”
Rolfes doesn’t believe the timing of the impending closure is a coincidence, although that’s how the brewery has framed it in public statements. The decision “feels like a form of punishment” and “definitely an intimidation tactic from ownership, she said.
“We haven’t felt intimidated,” she said. “We feel even more powerful.”
In a statement shared to social media, Surly called the timing of the announcement “not ideal” but said the decision was made “weeks ago” and the company respects hospitality employees’ “decision to turn to an outside organization for representation and will continue the dialogue.”
“Plans were put in place weeks ago to close the beer hall, with the announcement planned for this week,” founder and owner Omar Ansari told Brewbound in a statement last week.
“Our records will clear up any concerns about timing that the Labor Relations Board might have,” he added.
In April, Ansari told Brewbound that the company had lost around 60% of its revenue due to the shut down of its beer hall, pizza place and event space, as well as on-premise closures. The closures and loss of revenue led Surly to furlough 280 members of its then-360-person workforce.
Minnesota lawmakers also didn’t offer breweries the size of Surly — the 34th largest craft brewery by volume, according to national; trade group the Brewers Association — relief during the shutdown, such as to-go-beer sales or curbside pickup.
Unite Surly Workers is forging ahead with its union election, preparation for which takes at least 30 days, Rolfes said.
“We have already been in the process of making sure that we are able to do that as soon as possible,” she said. An election date has yet to be set.
Once workers announce their intent to organize, the National Labor Relations Act forbids employers from interfering or intimidating them. According to the National Labor Relations Board, forms of illegal behavior from employers include:
- “Threatening employees with loss of jobs or benefits if they join or vote for a union or engage in protected concerted activity.
- Threatening to close the plant if employees select a union to represent them.
- Questioning employees about their union sympathies or activities in circumstances that tend to interfere with, restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights under the Act.
- Promising benefits to employees to discourage their union support.
- Transferring, laying off, terminating, assigning employees more difficult work tasks, or otherwise punishing employees because they engaged in union or protected concerted activity.
- Transferring, laying off, terminating, assigning employees more difficult work tasks, or otherwise punishing employees because they filed unfair labor practice charges or participated in an investigation conducted by NLRB.”
After Surly informed workers of the impending layoffs, Unite Surly Workers asked supporters to email Surly owner Ansari and director of hospitality Dan Dinovis a message imploring them to revisit the decision to close the beer hall and recognize the nascent union.
“Amidst this ever-changing world, a union can make your employees feel as though they are safe while at work, secure in their employment and that their needs are being met by the company they work so hard for,” the template message reads. “Clearly, the decision to lay off these employees is a response to their choice in unionizing and not an attempt to protect your business.”
Employees of at least one craft brewery have successfully formed a union. Last December, workers at San Francisco-based Anchor Brewing approved a three-year contract with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union that includes an average wage increase of 8%.