The current pandemic has affected workers across Canada. Many have been forced to work in unsafe conditions, without access to proper health and safety gear. Others have been laid off, unsure of whether or not they’ll have a job to come back to when the crisis ends. Breweries, once considered recession-proof, have not been spared.

So far the exact impact that COVID-19 has had on the brewing industry is unclear. What is clear though is that it is drastic. Many breweries have already advertised that they will be shutting down, hopefully temporarily. Others have drastically shifted their production schedules, unable to sell to now-closed bars and restaurants. In a recent article in The Growler, the owner of one medium-sized brewery in Toronto was quoted as having laid off 90% of his staff despite continuing with deliveries.

What then of brewers, those of us who make the beer? For us, the future is even more uncertain. While many provinces have declared breweries an essential service, demand is down across the board. Many of us have been laid off, have seen our hours reduced, or will see the breweries we have helped build shut down. We have no recourse to demand the improvement of our situation, and no guarantee we’ll be rehired when things get better.

As brewers, we have already been pushed to the brink. Our wages are low, our hours are long, and we work in often unsafe conditions without proper protective equipment. Injuries are common. The poor state of our working conditions have given us virtually no safety net, save patient loved ones, to fall back on. While our hours have been reduced or eliminated, our bills and rent haven’t.

Or, to put it in different terms: when times are good and demand is high, we are expected to work obscene hours in brutal conditions (50C heat…) in order to meet that demand. Our wages stay the same, and brewery owners make a killing. And now that times are bad and demand is down, despite the fact that we as brewery workers produce all of the beer, we are discarded as though we are unimportant.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Look no further than Labatt’s in London whose employees are unionized with SEIU Local 2 Branch Local 1. While the collective agreement signed by these workers has serious issues (the two-tiered wage agreement being a huge glaring one), brewers at Labatt’s have seniority guarantees that ensure that hire-backs after layoffs must happen by order of seniority. They have guaranteed paid sick days, as well as paid personal days. Hell, workers who began working before 2015 have guaranteed pay during layoffs. This is on top of an impeccable health and safety record, ensured by workers having some power over the administration of the brewery. Can you imagine if the rest of us enjoyed this level of security?

And it’s not just confined to the macrobreweries either. Just one year ago, workers at Anchor Brewing Company (one of the pioneers of craft beer!) voted to join the International Longshore Workers Union. Key issues included wage rates and sick pay. Shortly after a satellite location of Anchor with only 9 employees also unionized. As of December 2019 the brewers had successfully negotiated their first contract which included: vastly improved pay, paid breaks, holiday pay, proper health insurance, paid sick days, and a proper retirement plan.

We can win better working conditions in our industry. We can win respect for workers in our industry. We can make it so that a crisis like COVID19 and the coming recession isn’t off-loaded onto the shoulders of brewery workers. But workers will never win this on their own. In order to win, we need to be organized: we need a union.

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Are you a brewer in Canada interested in unionizing? Rise would love to hear from you. Email us at rise-levee-news@protonmail.com!