Woodford Reserve violated labor laws when it awarded pay raises and changed vacation policies a week ahead of workers holding a vote on whether or not to unionize, ruled a federal judge earlier this week.
Administrative law judge Andrew Gollin of the National Labor Relations Board said Monday that the Kentucky-based distillery and its parent company, Brown-Forman, should be required to recognize and bargain with a local Teamsters union.
The ruling comes after workers began a unionizing campaign in August 2022 that was motivated by higher wages, following a $1 per-hour increase across the board earlier in the year that was seen as inadequate.
The “hallmark violation,” according to Gollin, occurred as a result of the Kentucky-based distillery offering bottles of bourbon, a relaxation of vacation policies, and pay raises timed with the organizing effort. After managers held a series of meetings with employees when they were made aware of the unionizing, employers handed out bottles of bourbon to each production employee and announced $4 per hour across-the-board increases that hit paychecks about a week prior to the election. Vacation and annual merit policies were also changed.
Once the pay raise was announced, interest in the union waned, Gollin said. The union ultimately lost the election, despite speculation that 50-60% of the employees had previously signed authorization cards. The union responded by filing an unfair labor practice charge.
“Overall, the timing and circumstances surrounding these actions are more than sufficient to infer unlawful motivation,” Gollin said.
In court documents, Brown-Forman argued that the pay increases were intended to address the ongoing recruitment and retention issues at Woodford Reserve, while the changes to annual merit increases and vacation policies were in response to employee concerns that predated any awareness of the union organizing campaign. The bourbon gift was nothing more than a routine morale booster, argued the company.
Brown-Forman is reviewing the judge’s decision and determining next steps based on the ruling, a spokesperson told BevNet via email.
Many of the other major Kentucky distilleries are union members, though unionization efforts in the past years in another whiskey hub, Tennessee, have stalled. After employees fought for over a year (and picketed during one of the distillery’s largest public events), last month Proximo-owned Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey ratified its first union contract.
Labor organizing disputes have swept the beer industry as of late. The bourbon industry is no stranger to conflicts, either, although Heaven Hill’s 2021 six-week strike may have earned the most recent headlines. Other major names in bourbon including Jim Beam and Four Roses also faced strikes in the last decade as the demand for American whiskey continues to grow, now reaching $5.3 billion in 2023, up in sales +3.8%.