Teamsters Local 1199 has filed an unfair labor practice (ULP) charge on behalf of union members at the Boston Beer Company brewery in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The union claims the company is “refusing to bargain in good faith” as its newest members work to bargain for their first contract. The ULP charge was filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on February 7, and the Teamsters issued a press release on Wednesday. The group of new members includes 20 workers who joined the union late last year. Negotiations have been ongoing since Summer 2024, a Teamsters spokesperson told Brewbound.
“Boston Beer Company is dragging its feet, and Teamsters won’t tolerate it,” Local 1199 president Randy Verst said in the release. “These workers are responsible for the success of these brands. This company owes them the simple respect of meeting for contract negotiations.”
The new members are seeking to be placed on the same raise schedule as their more tenured coworkers, according to the release. An existing contract has “long” covered “most” employees at the brewery, which employs around 200 workers, according to the ULP filing.
“Being asked to accept the employer’s last offer, which included wage cuts for our most senior third of the department, was aggravating to say the least,” blend technician Brian Morris said in the release. “The fact that we unanimously rejected it shows just how united we are. The company needs to return to bargaining because this is far from over.”
A Boston Beer spokesperson told Brewbound the company believes it has dealt with the union in good faith.
“We held 16 bargaining sessions with the union over a several-month period that involved much back and forth,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve met with them whenever they requested to bargain, and we’re confident we’ve met our duty to bargain in good faith.”
Boston Beer acquired the Cincinnati brewery in 1997 from Hudepohl-Schoenling, according to founder and chairman Jim Koch’s memoir, Quench Your Own Thirst – Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two.
Prior to buying the facility, which was “known as a strong union shop,” Boston Beer had been contract brewing Samuel Adams there, Koch wrote. Decades before that, Koch’s father, Charles Koch, worked there as a brewer.
In his book, Koch detailed the process through which Boston Beer integrated the facility into the company.
“A typical buy-out company might have shut Hudepohl-Schoenling, let go of all the union workers, and hired new, nonunion workers before reopening,” he wrote. “We weren’t about to do that. Having worked during college as a low-level employee in factories, I’d learned that there are good unions and bad unions, just like there are good bosses and bad bosses.
“Most unions were good, I thought, and most employee problems were, in fact, caused by bad managers,” Koch continued. “As I observed, the workers in this brewery were well-meaning, hardworking people. They wanted to come in each day and make something they were proud of. We could engage with that attitude and build on it.”
Compensation for Boston Beer’s c-suite will increase between +3% and +8% and executives will receive bonuses between nearly $200,000 and $1 million, according to an 8-K form filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 5:20 p.m. ET on Thursday, February 27, to include additional information from the Teamsters about how many members are involved in the negotiations and when they began.