OTTAWA — For decades, a job at Labatt, one of Canada’s two major breweries, came with an unusual perk: free beer for life. But now, the company’s retirees have been cut off.

In a memo to employees, the brewer, which is owned by the beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev, said it would gradually turn off the retirees’ beer tap over the next two years.

“It’s been around, I think, since the breweries have been around,” David Bridger, the president of the Service Employees International Union local that represents workers at Labatt’s brewery in London, Ontario, said this week. He predicted that the loss of the bottomless keg would further undermine morale.

“It’s certainly not the way it was in the past, when there was fanatical devotion to the brand and the company,” said Mr. Bridger, who is also chairman of the Canadian Brewery Council, an alliance of brewery-related unions. “Today it’s just a job.”