Details of Molson Coors contract reveal Teamsters union sell-out of strike
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Details of the Teamsters’ contract with Molson Coors in Fort Worth, Texas, acquired by the WSWS reveal how union bureaucrats betrayed 420 workers who went on strike for more than three months against the nation’s second-largest brewer.
In February, workers rejected the company’s first offer to raise wages by just one dollar, giving them 93 percent approval to strike. Over the next three months, workers defied company demands to limit wage increases.
But the Teamsters bureaucracy left Molson Coors workers to fight alone. In particular, it blocked the strike of 5,000 workers at Anheuser-Busch, whose contract was expiring at almost the same time. After isolating Molson Coors workers, the Teamsters channeled support for the strike behind a failed consumer boycott campaign to disguise their isolation of the strike.
Since preventing a strike, the Teamsters have announced a new “voluntary downsizing” at Anheuser-Busch. The voluntary program provides for a $30,000 payout plus an additional $1,000 for each year of service. Under the AB contract, the company is given explicit authority to close breweries in exchange for jobs at other plants, with no guarantee that a worker will be able to keep his current salary, position or seniority.
The workers put up a courageous fight. They rejected the company’s insulting offers and remained determined to win their strike. But the Teamsters bureaucracy was not prepared to lose patience with the local leadership. It dissolved the local board in preparation for a sell-out.
On May 22, the Teamsters announced that its members had ratified a new collective bargaining agreement, ending the strike. The union did not release any information about the terms of the agreement or the outcome of the vote. When workers responded to the union’s announcement on Facebook, denouncing the collective bargaining agreement as a sellout, the bureaucracy deleted the post. The Teamsters appear to have removed all references to the strike from their Facebook and Twitter/X pages.
Details from the contract make it clear why. The contract provides for three levels and establishes new trade categories for industrial technicians, mechanics and electricians. These three levels will be filled depending on how many positions the company wants to keep. The contract puts about 10 percent of the workforce in level three, 30 percent in level two and the rest in level one for trade positions in the packaging and brewing sectors.
These new levels will be filled through a joint union-management recruitment program. The two groups will then evaluate the performance of the levels system over the next year and the company will decide whether creating new positions at higher levels is appropriate.
This system gives the impression of career advancement. In reality, however, it is used to keep wages low by limiting and controlling the number of people who can advance to the higher pay grades. If an employee comes into conflict with management or local union leadership, for example by criticizing the sell-out contract, he or she may be excluded from promotions or demoted to a lower pay grade. The contract gives the company extensive power to set the performance standards for each pay grade and gives management the authority to transfer tradesmen to the shop floor, where they are paid significantly less: the hourly wage at the end of the contract is $28.77 for first-grade technicians and $39.51 for first-grade mechanics.
In recent collective bargaining, the Teamsters celebrated the end of the two-class system for warehouse workers that paid different wages depending on the job assignment. The introduction of a new class system for all employees, in which the union works with management to assign select, higher-paying positions, exposes the bureaucracy as an appendage of management, acting as a collective bargaining agreement rather than a labor organization.
Wage increases are generally well below the rate of inflation, but are particularly low for industrial technicians. For all three technician levels, the maximum wage increase between the first and third years of the contract is $1.27 per hour, or about 3.5 percent. The highest increases are for electricians, who receive a wage increase of about $3 per hour, or 7.6 percent.
These salary adjustments are either well below or will barely cover the inflation rate over the next few years. They also do not take into account the crushing inflation rate since the last contract was passed in 2021.
In addition, the three months of strike will not be counted towards employees’ entitlements, “including holiday entitlements and credited service time”.
Retired employee health insurance will also be cut sharply. Under the previous RK plan, the company committed to contributing $247.20 ($299.10 in 2026) for retirees and $481 ($582 in 2016) for retirees and their spouses. All current retirees will remain in the old plan, and all employees who plan to retire by June 1, 2024, will have the option to retire under the old RK plan.
But now, current employees will be subject to a significantly modified plan called the R4 Plan. Retirees who retire early under the R4 Plan will face greatly increased monthly contributions. If they retire at age 57, the monthly employee contribution will be $581, compared to $100 at age 62 or older. At retirement, employer contributions will cease, and health insurance will end when the employee becomes eligible for Medicare. In addition, the employee must have been employed by the company or under another Teamsters contract for at least 20 years.
The general health insurance plan for workers will also only be increased by 10 cents per hour compared to the collective agreement. The plan also calls for an agreement between the Teamsters and the company allowing management to “explore the possibility of alternative health insurance for employees” and stating that “if savings result from the implementation of the new plan, the parties will negotiate the allocation of those savings among employees.” This is absurd, since any “savings” by definition come at the expense of workers.
This opens the door for Molson Coors and the union bureaucracy to negotiate a new health insurance plan behind the workers’ backs. However, the plan does not actually provide for the savings to be passed on to the workers “collectively.”
The collective bargaining offer includes a clause that the union must submit the contract to members for ratification or the proposal will be withdrawn. The demand to approve the contract was conditional, offering adjustments to vacation times and the opportunity to retire now under the old contract. This quid pro quo, exchanging contract terms for approval, is a violation of workers’ rights to a democratic bargaining process for the collective agreement, free from collusion between union leadership and management.
The Molson Coors sell-off must be seen in the context of growing corporate attacks on jobs in the brewing industry and on the working class as a whole.
Two years ago, new Teamsters chairman Sean O’Brien took office as a supposed “reform candidate” seeking to reverse decades of betrayals under the “old guard” of James Hoffa (son of the more famous mid-20th century Teamster leader). Yet the sellout has continued without interruption. This includes the Teamsters’ role in blocking a railroad strike in 2022 and the contract deal at UPS last year that paved the way for more than 12,000 layoffs and the closure of 200 plants.
Not only the Teamsters, but the bureaucracies of all the major unions are full partners in a global jobs bloodbath. The auto industry has shed thousands of jobs with the quiet support of the United Auto Workers, whose fake “reform” candidate is a key ally of the Biden White House. Millions of jobs are on the hit list as corporations seek to drastically cut spending and break the strike movement of recent years.
Companies are trying to increase profits by cutting costs, especially labor costs. The Biden administration and the Federal Reserve are part of this campaign, using high interest rates to slow wage growth by increasing unemployment. The creation of wage brackets, raising wages and benefits below the rate of inflation, and Molson Coors’ promotion of early retirement are all related to this corporate cost-cutting, which the Teamsters are happy to help enforce.
The lesson from the Molson Coors strike and other struggles is that a real fight against big business requires a fight against the union bureaucracy. Workers are beginning to take matters into their own hands by building new organizations and action committees to wage a two-front war against management and union officials, and by allying themselves with workers fighting layoffs around the world.
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