The ol' Labor Day two-fer
A ~curated selection~ of the boozeletter’s labor-focused coverage from the archives
Happy Labor Day, Fingers Fam! I’m taking the day off, and I hope you’re able to, as well. In addition to this special podcast playlist to entertain you on your holiday travels, below you’ll find a ~curated selection~ of the boozeletter’s labor-focused coverage about the beverage-alcohol industry from the archives.
As a laborer myself, I depend on reader support to earn a living, so if you haven’t yet, please consider buying subscription to fund my independent journalism on drinking in America. I’m running a one-day only sale, don’t miss it:
If you’re looking for more recent analysis on the labor movement’s intersection with the drinks business, check out my most recent column at VinePair, published this past Friday. Here’s a taste:
Macrobrewing executives at the top of the industry have been no great friends to unions of late, don’t get me wrong. But thanks to Jack Welch and the rest of the Masters of the Universe who remade American corporations into singular Molochs of shareholder return, we’ve come to expect a certain extractive ghoulishness from the C-suites of publicly traded firms these days. Workers, being both expensive and prone to occasionally imagining more for themselves than a life of forever toil, have been an obvious target for both pragmatic and ideological reasons. There’s a reason pro-union sentiment and corporate profits are both hitting historic highs at the same time: American workers are realizing they’ve been fleeced by decades of anti-labor propaganda from the suits, and they want their f*cking money back.
Craft brewing was supposed to be different, man. Owners made their bread for three decades in part on claiming to be everything that Big Beer wasn’t. They cared about the environment! They cared about the community! They didn’t even wear suits! When it comes to labor relations, though, the anti-corporate segment has tended to prove the old labor organizer’s creed: a boss is a boss is a boss.
As I’ve noted before, my work at Fingers is vital to my work at VinePair, and vice-versa, so when you buy a subscription, you’re kinda getting a two-fer on independent, adversarial, worker-focused journalism about the booze industry. Wow, what a deal! Thanks to all the Friends of Fingers who already underwrite this work with their hard-earned beer money. If you haven’t yet, you know what to do. Up the drinks, up the workers. Happy Labor Day, Fingers Fam.
