By Mike Miner
The employees at Molson Canada’s plant in Barrie are fighting back against the corporation. When the brewing giant announced the impending closure of their brewery in Barrie, Oct. 7, the Canadian Auto Workers union and their members were prepared to fight for job security.
But there’s something new in their battle plan. Along with union favourites such as picket lines, the union is using advertising and Molson’s chief competitor against the brewing giant.
Since Molson announced that the plant will close next September, the union has tried various methods to pressure the company into favourable negotiations.
By Nov. 22, some of the striking workers at the Barrie plant had seized and occupied the brewery and halted all brewing at the plant.
The situation escalated on Nov. 27 when the CAW launched an advertising campaign.
The union has paid for billboards depicting a case of Labatt Blue, calling for beer enthusiasts across the land to “Be true blue,” and boycott Molson.
It has been a hard road that brought the CAW to the point of sanctioning a boycott. It has to do with the competition between Molson and Labatt.
Molson has been saddled with more brewing capacity than they’ve been able to use since they merged with Carling O’Keefe a decade ago. With Molson’s lead in the battle to be Canada’s most popular beer dwindling, people expected a brewery to be closed as early as two years ago. Molson says it now intends to spend $100 million to expand their Toronto plant.
The 414 workers who will lose their jobs in Barrie say they want preferential hiring into a Molson plant in nearby Etobicoke.
“The issue is jobs,” says Susan Spratt, a national staff representative at the CAW. “The right to have preferential hiring into the Etobicoke plant and enhanced pensions to get more people pension ready.”
She says Molson’s hard-line stance on the closure and layoffs has forced the CAW’s hand.
“This is the first time our union has done a boycott against a corporation we represent,” she says. “We wish we didn’t have to do that. Up until now, we’ve been a major supporter of Molson products. As far as we’re concerned, Molson made this decision themselves.”
Spratt says supporting Labatt products was the most effective way to get to Molson.
“In Canada, there are two main breweries: Labatt and Molson,” she says. “So the issue is: Does Molson want to lose potential customers and volume of sales?”
Some might question whether a union should be promoting a product that competes with the company that employs its own workers. The CAW doesn’t have any interest in Labatt.
Workers at Labatt are represented by the National Union of Public Government Employees, not the CAW.
With the two breweries locked in a battle for Canada’s beer dollar, supporting a competitor who is consistently gaining ground might not be the best idea in the long run.
Even CAW president Buzz Hargrove has said they can’t save the plant, so if what the union wants to do is put their members to work at Molson, they shouldn’t be supporting the competitor even as a bargaining chip.
Financial analysts have said the plant closure is more than necessary, it is overdue. It seems investors agree.
The day after Molson announced the closure, Molson’s stock rose $1.20 to $25.75 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
And there’s still the question of whether or not the boycott will be effective. Beer is an industry notorious for the brand loyalty among consumers, not to mention that many retail purchasing decisions are made by drunk people.
So far, the effects of the boycott haven’t been noticed, even in Barrie.
Johnny Zhu, the owner of Denley’s Sports Bar and Grill in Barrie says people are ordering what they’ve always ordered.
“There’s been no effect that I can see,” he says. “We have a lot of beers, and people are still just ordering whatever they like. I haven’t noticed Molson being ordered less.”
While the people at Molson aren’t happy about the boycott, they say they aren’t very concerned yet, either.
Ferg Devins, the director of corporate affairs for Molson’s Ontario division, says the company is waiting to see the effects of the CAW ad campaign.
“It’s too early to tell what the effects are or will be,” he says. “They just announced it last week.”
Devins also says Molson won’t get involved, or launch a counter-campaign.
“We’d just like to get back to the negotiating table and try to settle things there,” he says.
But even if the boycott isn’t effective in this case, the CAW is setting a bad precedent.
By taking an adversarial stance to the point where they spend their money to support the competitor of a corporation they are negotiating with, they can only hurt their own workers in the end.
A boycott has its place when negotiating breaks down, but to try and divert business away from a company employing its members, the CAW is attempting suicide.