USA: City Brewery workers reject contract offer

The membership of the union local that represents about 300 hourly employees at City Brewery in La Crosse rejected July 22 a proposed new three-year contract by a 2-1 ratio, a union official said July 24, La Crosse Tribune posted July 25.

They continue to work under terms of a three-year contract that expired in May. City Brewery hourly workers are paid a base wage of $16.22 an hour under the old contract.

Uncertainties regarding City Brewing Co.’s proposed purchase of a brewery in Latrobe, Pa., might have been a factor in Sunday’s vote in La Crosse, said Wayne Schultz, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 695.

Schultz, speaking from his local’s headquarters in Madison, said he did not know the terms of the two-year contract with City Brewing that union members at the Latrobe brewery approved Sunday.

City Brewing Co. President Randy Smith said July 24 he wasn’t at Sunday’s July 22 union meeting in La Crosse, so he doesn’t know whether union members in La Crosse were wondering whether Latrobe workers were being offered a better deal.

“They were economically equivalent offers,” Smith said. “The Latrobe employees wanted to structure theirs a little different than our employees have in the past. They chose some options having to do with sick days and payments having to do with those” that differ from those in La Crosse, Smith said.

Smith said acquiring the Latrobe brewery isn’t expected to have a negative effect on employment at the La Crosse brewery.

“We’re turning away lots of business here” and need to increase capacity, he said. Having a brewery in Pennsylvania also will open some Eastern markets.

In March, City Brewing confirmed it might buy the Coors Brewing Co. brewery in Memphis, Tenn., which Coors plans to close. But in May, Smith said the Memphis acquisition was off after that brewery’s union membership rejected a City Brewing contract offer that would have paid them what La Crosse brewery workers receive.

“We didn’t proceed with (the Memphis acquisition) because the union voted it down overwhelmingly,” Smith said July 24.

“We had a situation in Memphis where we, as a matter of principle, did not want to provide superior benefits to people in Memphis compared to what we were providing here in La Crosse,” Smith said.

“We offered a similar (to La Crosse) package in Latrobe, and the Latrobe people accepted it,” he said.

Union and company negotiators had reached a tentative agreement on the proposed contract that was rejected Sunday by La Crosse union members, Schultz and Smith said.

“There were increases in insurance, pension and wages and several language changes,” Schultz said. He and Smith declined to give specifics.

26 July, 2006