The Whiskey Reviewer A World of Whiskey, Poured Every Weekday
By Richard Thomas
The week-long strike by Jim Beam distillery workers came to a conclusion on Saturday, October 22. After voting 201-19 to go on strike, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 111D voted 204-19 to approve a new labor agreement with Jim Beam, an arm of Beam Suntory.
The union went on strike not over money, but over working schedules and staffing issues. As the bourbon industry has boomed, many workers not just at Jim Beam, but across Kentucky have complained of working long overtime hours for months or years on end. The Beam workers wanted the company to hire more full-time employees, rather than to rely on temporary, short-term and part-time hires and overtime from full-time workers as they had been.
Beam agreed to meet this central demand and hire more full-time employees. Now attention shifts to the rest of the Kentucky bourbon industry, and whether other distilleries with similar schedule and staff issues will follow suit or if the industry will see other strikes. Brown-Forman, Heaven Hill, Sazerac and Wild Turkey are also unionized distilleries, and of them Brown-Forman and Heaven Hill have recently concluded new labor contracts.
