Big Grocery's "nefarious bargain"

Plus: Voluntarily recognizing your brewery’s union? In this economy?!

Editor’s note: Welcome to The Fingers Weekender, a Sunday digest exclusively for paying Friends of Fingers featuring the independent journalism about drinking in America you love, optimized for hungover scrolling. In today’s edition:

• Why Molson Coors’ Teamsters are on strike in Texas;

• What the New York Times’ big swan song-for-somms piece was missing;

• How Kroger and Albertsons allegedly “colluded” to kneecap labor;

And much more. If someone forwarded this to you, buy a subscription to get next Sunday’s edition straight in your inbox.—Dave.

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🍺 BEER

When brewers enforce non-competes, everybody loses. I followed up on Brewbound’s report last week about former employees’ lawsuits over Boston Beer Co.’s aggressive-for-the-industry policy on non-compete agreements with a column this week at VinePair featuring expertise from Evan Starr, Ph.D., an assistant professor at University of Maryland’s business school. His extensive research on non-competes suggests they’re a “blunt instrument” that makes hiring worse for both sides of the labor market without meaningfully enhancing investment or innovation compared to more surgical legal tools (e.g., NDAs.) Somebody ought to ship that message off to Boston, eh?