The Fingers Podcast

Editor’s note: This is Fingers’ last newsletter of the year. Have a wonderful, safe holiday. I’ll see you on the other side!—Dave.

For 2021 and much of 2022, I cohosted a biweekly-ish Twitter Spaces session called Beer Byliners with Kate Bernot (Good Beer Hunting, Craft Beer & Brewing) and Jessica Infante (Brewbound) about the latest headlines and happenings in the American beer industry. It was an opportunity for us to decompress as reporters and shoot the shit as friends in a pretty low-stakes format with a few dozen familiar faces from across the beverage-alcohol landscape—sources, analysts, fellow journalists, et cetera. Byliners was lots of fun, but we all got busy, and eventually it felt like it’d run its course, plus our audience seemed to be less interested in listening to Twitter Spaces than they had been earlier in the pandemic. (Judging by Clubhouse’s nosedive, and Spaces’ own struggles, the feeling was pretty widespread regarding “social audio” generally!) So we let it sorta peter out at the end of the summer. No big deal.

But! For The Fingers Podcast’s last episode of 2022 (and maybe ever; see below), I rounded up my fellow Beer Byliners for one last job/recording, exclusively for paying Friends of Fingers. The result, recorded in mid-December, is something of a speedrun through the past year in beer, covering such tectonic shifts, high-dollar lawsuits, and run-of-the-mill shitshows as:

* The social-media crucifixion of Beer Jesus!

* Thank U, Bud Light Next / Hard Mtn. Dew, Look at Those Sales Figures!

* Blue Cloud, human-trafficking, Reyes Rules Everything Around Me, and other middle-tier beer fears!

* Stone vs. Keystone, the trade-dress trial of the 21st century (so far)!

* The “broke Southwest Airlines customer” approach to entering new markets!

* Jordan Peterson, beverage-alcohol litigant?!

* And so much more!

As an added bonus, I also challenged my fellow Beer Byliners to name a now-defunct beverage-alcohol brand that they believe would sell well if it was reintroduced to the American drinking public in 2023. Their answers may surprise you; mine, probably not so much. I had a blast talking to two of the sharpest minds covering the beverage-alcohol business, and feel lucky to call Kate and Jess colleagues and friends. Hope you enjoy our conversation! (NB: if my Jordan Peterson impression knots your stomach with unspeakable dread, good, that means it’s working.)

The Fingers Podcast is a paid-subscriber bonus. Please consider buying a subscription to access the entire episode archive, and to support independent journalism about drinking in America!

As for the future of The Fingers Podcast: it’s up in the air! Frankly, I’m not sure what to do with it. I love the opportunity to get deep and nerdy across disciplines with fascinating people from the booze world and beyond, but based on the pod’s modest downloads, I get the sense that the Fingers Fam just isn’t sure what to make of it, either. From an operational standpoint, publishing long-form interviews every month or so isn’t converting free readers to paid the way I hypothesized it might. As it stands, the work that goes into booking, prepping, and conducting the interviews, then editing the episodes, just costs too much time and effort for the payoff. I also don’t have the bandwidth to increase episode frequency to try to might improve performance and conversions, so it’s sorta stuck in purgatory. I’ve learned that independent media is all about tradeoffs, and my calculus has shifted a lot on The Fingers Podcast since I started publishing it. Hmm.

For the immediate future, I’m going to take a break from recording any new episodes for a couple months and brainstorm some new approaches to audio. I’ve got an idea that I’ve been chewing on for the past few months that I’m excited about, and will hopefully have a pilot episode or two to share with you in Spring 2023. In the meantime, paying Friends of Fingers can continue to access every episode via their private feed or the web archive. I love the medium, and I think a Fingers audio component could be really compelling to current and prospective Friends of Fingers alike… but in its current form, it’s just too much of a lift for your fearless Fingers editor to produce with the consistency and quality you deserve. So back to the drawing board we go.

🎧 Other recent episodes of The Fingers Podcast

* Labor Notes writer and organizer Jonah Furman

* James Wilt, journalist and author of Drinking Up the Revolution (Parts One & Two; transcript)

* Jack Hamilton, critic, professor, and author of Just Around Midnight

* Kim Kelly, journalist and author of 'Fight Like Hell'

* Craft labor writer and scholar Ben Anderson

* Low Culture Boil's Rax King, author of ‘Tacky’

* Hugging the Bar's Courtney Iseman

* Bryan Roth, journalist and news editor of Good Beer Hunting's Sightlines

* Dan Ozzi, music journalist and author of Sellout

You know how like 200 Starbucks stores have unionized since that first one in Buffalo did back in December 2021, and over 100 of those 200 all struck in unison on Red Cup Day this year because the company—which is one of the biggest private employers in the U.S. by the way—refuses to bargain with its workers in good faith and has actually fired scores of them just for exercising their federally protected right to organize on the job? What’s going on there?

So glad you asked. Today on The Fingers Podcast, exclusively for paying Friends of Fingers, I’ve got an interview with Jonah Furman , a writer and organizer at the worker publication/organizing platform Labor Notes. He’s also the guy behind Who Gets the Bird?, a vital, semi-weekly round-up of American labor news. If you spend any time on Twitter… well, first of all I’m sorry to hear it, you should definitely try to stop doing that. But second of all: you have probably come across Jonah thanks to his relentless coverage of the U.S. labor movement. We first crossed paths last year when I was reporting on United Food and Commercial Workers’ six-week strike at Heaven Hill’s Bardstown, Kentucky distillery. I knew he’d be great for The Fingers Podcast because of how well he can get deep in the weeds of this or that union drive, then zoom out on what it all means for the overall landscape for workers in this country, and earlier this year, our schedules finally aligned to make it happen.

The Fingers Podcast is usually paid-subscriber bonus, but this episode is free for all. Please consider buying a subscription to support independent journalism about drinking in America!

Jonah and I spoke in October 2022 about a ton of different, related topics: his coverage of the Starbucks union drive, the importance of being honest about the health and strength of American unions, and the best way for customers to show their support for workers organizing a shop they patronize. (Spoiler alert: it isn’t a boycott, because boycotts are way harder to pull off than anybody thinks, and they almost never work!) The upshot, as he sees it: despite the rising groundswell of American public support for unions—an August 2022 Gallup poll found 71% of the country felt positive towards organized labor, for example—“workers have to really want this for this to happen.” Capital has been eating labors lunch in this country for going on five decades, and it was never a fair fight to begin with. Still, Jonah believes the brushfire campaign by Starbucks Workers United is both proof-positive that it’s still possible, and a model of how to do it. I tend to agree.

It was a wide-ranging and illuminating conversation about consumer-facing food & drink’s place in the U.S.’s sorta-resurgent labor movement, and I hope you enjoy it. 

Jonah Furman is a writer and organizer with Labor Notes. He publishes Who Gets the Bird?, a newsletter of American labor news updates. Follow him on Twitter.

🎧 Other recent episodes of The Fingers Podcast

* James Wilt, journalist and author of Drinking Up the Revolution (Parts One & Two; transcript)

* Jack Hamilton, critic, professor, and author of Just Around Midnight

* Kim Kelly, journalist and author of 'Fight Like Hell'

* Craft labor writer and scholar Ben Anderson

* Low Culture Boil's Rax King, author of ‘Tacky’

* Hugging the Bar's Courtney Iseman

* Bryan Roth, journalist and news editor of Good Beer Hunting's Sightlines

* Dan Ozzi, music journalist and author of Sellout

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this interview is available here. A condensed transcript of Pts. 1 and 2 is available here. This is a paid-subscriber exclusive, so if you haven’t yet, please purchase a subscription to support my independent journalism about drinking in America!—Dave.

You know how parts of the United States have state-run retail networks for selling beverage alcohol, via which they hold partial or full monopolies over the pricing, sale, and profit of booze? What’s up with that?

So glad you asked. Today, exclusively for paying Friends of Fingers, I’ve got the second half of my interview with James Wilt, author of Drinking Up the Revolution: How to Smash Big Alcohol and Reclaim Working-Class Joy. (Here’s Part 1.) The book, which came out earlier this year, confronts the profit-driven practices of the world’s biggest beer, wine, and spirits producers and argues for a radical alternative system that puts drinkers before shareholders.

My interview with James took place a bit earlier this fall and lasted nearly two hours. We talked about everything from the ways in which global booze capital flexes its political muscles, to how craft beverage producers inadvertently give cover to their corporate counterparts, to his vision for a fairer, safer system for distributing drink without the profit motive dictating the terms of engagement. “It’s about reducing the density of liquor [stores], increasing pricing, doing all these things that are very contested, but ultimately evidence-based ways of reducing industry profits, and reducing harms,” he says of his (admitted radical!) proposal for regulating the beverage-alcohol business.

That’s not to say James is a prohibitionist; not so. “The world sucks for most people…. so it’s really necessary to come up with alternatives, which is why I [argue for] degrowing Big Alcohol and regrowing these community-owned and controlled alternatives” to the production, distribution, and sale of booze. How would we get there as a society—if we ever even decided to go? “I think at the end of the day, it really has to come down to owning, controlling, and retailing alcohol as a public good, as opposed to something motivated primarily by private profit,” he argues.

I highly recommend you grab Drinking Up the Revolution at the Fingers Reading Room or your local library. Even if you’re a diehard free-market anti-Marxist type, I think you’ll find it really thought-provoking. (Also what the hell are you doing reading Fingers with those politics? Drop me a line, I’d genuinely love to know!)

James Wilt is a freelance journalist, Ph.D. candidate, and the author of two books, Drinking Up the Revolution and Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars. Follow him on Twitter.

🎧 Other recent episodes of The Fingers Podcast

* Part 1 with James Wilt, journalist and author of Drinking Up the Revolution

* Jack Hamilton, critic, professor, and author of Just Around Midnight

* Kim Kelly, journalist and author of 'Fight Like Hell'

* Craft labor writer and scholar Ben Anderson

* Low Culture Boil's Rax King, author of ‘Tacky’

* Hugging the Bar's Courtney Iseman

* Bryan Roth, journalist and news editor of Good Beer Hunting's Sightlines

* Dan Ozzi, music journalist and author of Sellout

Dave interviews James Wilt about the profits, politics, and power of the global alcohol industry—and his radical vision for a better system that puts drinkers before shareholders. Episode 1 of 2.

You know how there’s a stereotype of people—usually urbane, knowledge-worker white guys—who make craft beer or whiskey or wine into their entire personality, and even though it’s obviously a pretty broad generalization, it still rings totally true to you and seems really familiar for reasons you can’t quite put your finger on? Me too. What’s the deal with that?

So glad you asked. Today, exclusively for paying Friends of Fingers, I’ve got an interview with Jack Hamilton about conspicuous consumption, cultural commodification, and so much more. Jack is a bit of a polymath, and he wears a bunch of hats, though not in the toxic start-uppy sense of the term. He files regular dispatches as Slate’s pop critic and teaches as an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Virginia (wahoowa, et cetera.) He’s also the author of Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination.

This past spring, Jack went a little bit viral on Twitter with a post about a movie called High Fidelity, which came out in the year 2000. (It’s based on a 1995 novel by the same name written by Nick Hornby.) Here’s what he posted:

As someone who loved both the book and movie versions of High Fidelity, and covers the rapidly shifting cultural landscape of American craft beer, I was intrigued. So I slid into Jack’s DMs and invited him on The Fingers Podcast.

🎁 This episode is exclusively for paying Friends of Fingers like you. Know a friend who might enjoy it? Hook ‘em up:

🤝 I depend on readers to fund the boozeletter’s independent journalism. Thank you so much for your support!—Dave.

This interview, which took place in late March 2022 but I just recently got around to editing because being an independent journalist is hard when you’re as bad at time management as I am, still totally holds up today. That’s because we spoke about a lot of concepts that are pretty much timeless, including the great poptimism vs. rockism debate, the greatest trick record labels and later streamers ever pulled, and why people seem determined to define themselves by the things they consume, even when it costs them a ton of money and heartbreak along the way. Throughout our conversation, Jack graciously tolerated me trying to map my own theories about the waning cachet of craft beer onto his field of study (thank you, Jack) and overall, I think we put together a really thought-provoking episode that bridges the gap between two rich cultural disciplines. I hope you agree. 

Listen in the player above, on the Substack iOS app, or via your preferred podcast platform using your private RSS link.

📬 Good post alert

Sorry to call my own number here but c’mon!!! See a good post that the Fingers Fam should know about? Please send me that good post via email or Twitter DM.

👀 More #content for further inquiry

From Jack:

* Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination (Harvard University Press)

* Spotify Has Made All Music Into Background Music (The Atlantic)

* Kanye Doesn’t Want You to Watch Netflix’s New Documentary About Him. Here’s Why You Should. (Slate)

Mentioned in the episode:

* Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres by Kelefa Sanneh (Penguin Press)

* The Day the Music Burned by Jody Rosen (New York Times)

* The Fingers Interview with Dan Ozzi, music journalist and author of ‘Sellout’ (The Fingers Podcast)

* High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (Riverhead Books)

🎧 Other recent episodes of The Fingers Podcast

* Kim Kelly, journalist and author of 'Fight Like Hell'

* Craft labor writer and scholar Ben Anderson

* Low Culture Boil's Rax King, author of ‘Tacky’

* Hugging the Bar's Courtney Iseman

* Bryan Roth, journalist and news editor of Good Beer Hunting's Sightlines

* Dan Ozzi, music journalist and author of ‘Sellout’

📲 The best Fingers meme ever and/or lately

Don’t miss out, follow Fingers on Instagram today. It’s free and your feed will thank you. (Not really, that would be weird. But you know what I mean.)

You know how there seem to be a lot of union drives at coffee shops, craft breweries, and artisanal bakeries these days, and you don’t really get it because you always figured that since their products were so much more delicious than their corporate counterparts, they must treat their workers much better, too? What’s up with that?

So glad you asked. Today on The Fingers Podcast and exclusively for paying Friends of Fingers, I’ve got an interview with Benjamin Anderson, a Ph.D. candidate and instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ben studies the labor movement in the so-called contemporary “craft” sectors—breweries, distilleries, coffeehouses, and so on. Basically, if it’s local, artisanal, or farm-to-table, he’s probably researched the conditions of the people that make it. His work has been published in a variety of journals and collections, and he’s finishing up his doctorate as we speak. 

🤝 Paying subscribers get access to this and every full-length interview on The Fingers Podcast.

I depend on reader support to fund the boozeletter’s independent journalism. To unlock more reporting, buy a subscription today!—Dave.

During our recording session in mid-March, Ben and I got into a ton of tactical and philosophical questions about the labor movement’s role in the craft brewing business, including the unique challenges of unionizing small shops, how the “we’re a family” myth at work keeps many employees from realizing their collective power, and the ways workers of different backgrounds are able to organize based on shared conditions in “craft” contexts. We also talked about the misleading myth of craft brewing’s “twisty-mustache fantasy;” I snuck in a garbage reference to the Avett Brothers and the Aughts’ short-lived “stomp, clap, hey” cultural aesthetic, which Ben graciously pretended to understand. It was a wide-ranging and super-informative conversation, and if you care about worker power, or the health of the craft beer business—or both—I think you’ll find it fascinating. I sure hope so.

Benjamin Anderson can be reached at [email protected]. If you’re interested in checking out the Craft Brewery Workers Alliance of Canada, find it here. 

👀 More #content for further inquiry

From Ben:

* The Forgotten Labour of Craft: Exploitation and Organizing in Artisanal Industries (Journal of Canadian Labour Studies)

* The Forgotten Labour of Craft (lecture transcript)

* Refining Creative Labour: Precarity and Autonomy in Cultural and Craft Industries (Journal of Canadian Labour Studies)

* “Beers and Fries, Please Don’t Unionize!”: Your Favourite Local Haunt is Anti-Worker (Mainlander)

* Framed! Labor and the Corporate Media (this book is actually by Christopher R. Martin, but Ben recommended it in our interview)

From me:

* The Fingers interview/podcast with Dylan Lancaster, worker and organizer at Nelson's Green Brier Distillery (Fingers)

* What can craft beer workers do about bad brewery bosses? (Fingers)

* Striking against "corporate greed" at Kentucky's biggest bourbon distillery (Fingers)

* How the Twin Cities became a hotbed for craft beverage unionizing (Fingers)

* As Allegations of Harassment and Abuse Send Shock Waves Through the Craft Beer Industry, Will Workers Take Action? (VinePair)

* Craft beer's "99% asshole-free" myth (Fingers)

* Anchor Union, One Year In: Lessons Learned at the Legendary Brewery (VinePair)

🎧 Other recent episodes of The Fingers Podcast

* Low Culture Boil's Rax King, author of ‘Tacky’

* Hugging the Bar's Courtney Iseman

* Bryan Roth, journalist and news editor of Good Beer Hunting's Sightlines

* Dan Ozzi, music journalist and author of ‘Sellout’

You know how earlier this year, Heaven Hill workers went on a six-week strike against their employer, which is one of the largest bourbon distilleries in Kentucky, and therefore the world? Well, about 2.5 hours to the south, across the Tennessee state line, workers at a very small whiskey distillery with a very big corporate overlord took notice. Here’s the deal.

Today on The Fingers Podcast I’ve got an interview with Dylan Lancaster, a tour guide and organizer at Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery in Nashville, Tennessee. Last week, Dylan and around 35 of his coworkers went public with a union drive at their workplace, a historic Nashville whiskey maker that in 2019 was acquired by Constellation Brands, the major beverage conglomerate behind brands like Corona, Mondavi, Casa Noble, and many more.

The Nelson’s Green Brier employees’ grievances are pretty familiar: low pay, bad working conditions, and unaffordable and/or inaccessible healthcare. But the way they’ve decided to address them—by forming a union with the United Food and Commercial Workers—is less so in Tennessee, a right-to-work state with one of the lowest labor union densities in the country. “Not only are we fighting a giant, multi-billion dollar corporation, but we're also doing it within a state that is not kind to unions or to workers more broadly,” Lancaster told The Fingers Podcast. “It's a bit of a David versus Goliath situation.”

🎧 This full-length interview is FREE to all subscribers on The Fingers Podcast.

Interviews are usually for paying subscribers only, but I’ve unlocked this one for the whole Fingers Fam. I need your support to continue this work. Consider purchasing a subscription:

In our interview, Dylan and I discussed why he and his colleagues decided to form the United Distillery Workers of Tennessee. They believe it’s the first distillery union in the Volunteer State, and they’re petitioning Constellation to voluntarily recognize the union. We got into the challenges of organizing quietly in a small shop, the perils of the American healthcare system for rank-and-file workers, and how the United Distillery Workers are hoping for good-faith treatment from their booze-biz bosses, while also bracing for the union-busting campaign that may or may not come.

Dylan also told me that part of their inspiration for the drive was seeing Heaven Hill’s workers—represented by the same union, UFCW—strike their bosses over healthcare and overtime provisions. Comparing the conditions, and wages, across state lines convinced Nelson’s Green Brier workers that collective bargaining was the way to go. “They were hiring people off the street for $21.50 an hour, when our lead bottler is making just under $20,” Dylan told me, comparing the wages Heaven Hill offered scabs to those that his colleagues earn at Nelson’s Green Brier. “Those are things we definitely took into account.”

Editor’s note: This interview was conducted via video call on 12/13/21. Neither Nelson’s Green Brier nor Constellation responded to Fingers’ requests for comment. The below transcript has been edited and condensed. The full-length interview is available on The Fingers Podcast.

Meet Dylan Lancaster, worker & organizer at Nelson's Green Briar Distillery

Dave Infante, Fingers: OK, Dylan Lancaster! Welcome to The Fingers Podcast. How you doing, man?

Dylan Lancaster, Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery/United Distillery Workers of Tennessee: I'm doing fantastic. How are you?

Doing well, man. You’re in Nashville, and you and your your colleagues made a little bit of news last week. What's going on in Nashville?

I work at Nelson's Green Brier Distillery in Nashville, who produce Belle Meade bourbon and Nelson's Green Brier Tennessee whiskey. Me and a majority of my co-workers got together and we are in the process of forming a union with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1995. On Friday, we filed for recognition with our corporate parent company, Constellation Brands, who owns Nelson's Green Brier. So we made a bit of a splash on Friday. So it's been pretty exciting.

As someone who's organized in the past, the day you go public is kind of one of the most the brightest spots in the entire campaign. What was the reception like in the community?

We actually had a pretty fantastic launch day. Morale was very high at the distillery. Some of my coworkers joked that they've never seen me interact with customers quite [so] enthusiastically in a long time. On on social media, we had an Action Network campaign that went live as soon as we filed; we did that in collaboration with the Central Labor Council of Middle Tennessee, who have a pretty extensive email list. I think something like 6,000 people, [an email] went out live to all of their followers. And then we had social media push as well on our social media. As of the recording, I think we're somewhere in the ballpark of 8,000 emails sent to higher-ups within Constellation, the CEO, the executive board of directors, all the way down to our direct supervisors at the distillery.

The company proved that it could pay us more, but then decided that they were not willing to do that.

So you’re asking people to sign a petition calling on Constellation Brands to voluntarily recognize your union. The best case scenario is Constellation Brands wakes up tomorrow and says, These workers at Nelson's Green Brier have the right to organize, we respect that they've made a decision here, so we're going to voluntarily recognize the union and meet them at the bargaining table. Some companies do actually take that route. But if they choose not to voluntarily recognize the union, what's your understanding of what happens at that point?

Then they are going to take it to an election, all we need to win the election is a simple majority of 50% [of ballots cast by eligible workers] plus one vote. So in between the day that we filed, which is Friday, the 10th of December, and whenever the election will happen, which is sometime within the next 40 days, I believe, the company is going to try to single out people and try to get votes to beat us at the election. [This] is when typically union busters are hired in outside firms, to help sway workers who have signed authorization cards into voting against the union. There was actually one branch that did organize, which was very exciting. So solidarity to the Starbucks workers, but you might know better than I but I think there was two other stores that voted on the same day and lost their elections.

So how big is the proposed bargaining unit that you guys have organized down there?

It's a pretty small operation. I think there's some something in the ballpark of 35 to 36 eligible workers to join the union. 80% of them have signed authorization cards.

That’s an overwhelming majority.

Yeah, and you only need a third to file [for union recognition.] So we did our due diligence there. Frankly, it was a pretty easy conversation… People were pretty down and ready to join up and to try and work together to increase wages and benefits. We have been, as a lot of places have been, short on staff. And so there's been a lot of burnout, a lot of long weeks and not a lot of breathing room in between shifts. So that's something that has been wearing on a lot of these workers as well.

Something that's unique about this particular struggle is we could be the first unionized distillery in the state of Tennessee. And as I'm sure a lot of your listeners know, Tennessee is a “right to work” state, and they have probably the most draconian labor laws in the U.S. Or at least up there. [Tennessee must] be one of the worst on labor. So not only are we fighting a giant, multi-billion dollar corporation, but we're also doing it within a state that is not kind to unions or to workers more broadly. So it's a bit of a David versus Goliath situation.

I'm recording this podcast from South Carolina… I don't know which state is worse for labor, but they're both pretty bad. Being in the South, where unions have traditionally struggled, what was your experience with organized labor? How much did you know what you were getting into, before starting this?

I actually grew up in Michigan. So I come from strong labor state. But no one in my family actually ever worked for a union. I've never worked for a union. And it wasn't until I moved to Nashville and got involved with the Democratic Socialists of America, and started doing organizing through them and learning more about unions and becoming friends with union organizer, I learned a little bit more of the nuts and bolts. The conversations that I had with a lot of my co-workers, there was a lot of mystification around unions and what they do. So I had to really study up to answer a lot of those questions. I was pretty surprised. People just didn't know generally what unions did. And it wasn't ‘til after we had those conversations that it just kind of clicked and it was like, Why would we not do this?

Totally. I grew up in New Jersey, and there's certainly a union presence there, but I wasn't exposed to it as a kid either. I didn't come from a union family or anything. So when I first started organizing, I had a similar experience, which is like… I felt like I was “unlearning” a lot of what I learned in like school from like the history books. There's very little labor history taught, and it's made to feel kind of like ancient history as though unions aren't relevant anymore.

Exactly. Yeah, a lot of deprogramming needs to happen.

There's money going somewhere, but not into the pockets of the people who are producing the products and creating the profits.

So tell me how this thing came together. What are some of the major grievances that you guys organized around as you were putting together this drive?

So during the beginning of the pandemic, they actually paid the front of house workers to shelter at home. So they bumped up our hourly rate, because a lot of our income is tipped. The house receives tips from the people coming into the distillery. I'm a tour guide, so I'm the person that's going over production, the history of our distillery, doing guided tastings—and before the pandemic, walking people through the facility, explaining how everything works. Those workers, the front of house, were sent home and paid a little bit more to make up for the lack of tips that they weren’t getting. About three months or four months [later], they brought us back, before vaccines, and everyone's hourly rate went down to what it was before the pandemic. That was a big sticking point for a lot of folks. The company proved that it could pay us more, but then decided when the rubber meets the road and we actually needed to come back, that they were not willing to do that.

And a lot of the people that were coming to the distillery before vaccines were not the most thoughtful in terms of wearing masks, [maintaining] social distances, being respectful of the health and safety of [the staff.] We got a lot of people that were getting mad about wearing masks, getting adversarial, people who are getting mad at us that we weren't taking them in the barrel warehouse, or on the production floor, showing them the still. So it actually made our job harder, and we're getting paid less, because—surprise, surprise—those types of people are not the best tippers in the world.

Yeah, that Venn diagram is basically just a circle.

We brought these grievances to Constellation, to our direct managers, to HR, and nothing changed. We got a minor raise, but definitely not enough to offset any of these, these problems. Constellation, is a $30 to $40 billion corporation… this is a company that absolutely can provide for these workers. Meanwhile, in the face of being told they can’t give us raises, they are doing a $10 to $15 million build-out on our distillery. And as of last week, it was announced that Constellation is also spending $1.3 billion to build a new brewery in Mexico. So where's that money going? It seems like there's a large flow of money going somewhere, but it's not going into the pockets of the people who are producing the products, and who are creating those profits for that multinational, multi-billion dollar corporation.

So wages were a big point of organizing. And it also sounds like to some of the pandemic working conditions were themselves point of friction that you guys organized. Were there are others?

Yeah. So the only workers that are offered, or that can buy into the healthcare that the corporation provides are full-time [workers.] So I mentioned that we had a huge labor shortage, and all of the part-time people were working full-time hours, but not receiving healthcare. I was offered a full-time position, which I took. It did not come with a pay raise, and the company only pays for 50% of our healthcare. So effectively, I'm actually making less money as a full-time employee than I was as a part-time person, because 50% of my healthcare is coming out of my my paycheck. That's a grievance that I expressed to both corporate HR and my direct supervisors. And I just kind of got a shrug of the shoulders. A lot of my other coworkers who are part-time, they would like to have healthcare, especially during a global pandemic.

I hope that Constellation will come to the negotiating table in good faith, but we're prepared to fight.

Pretty understandable.

The healthcare that they do provide, ironically, the plan that I'm on is called the Bind plan, which if you ask me is a little on the nose.

Right. If you filed a novel with that detail in it, your editor would kick it back, because it’s just a little too obvious.

Yeah, exactly. I'm obviously speaking from a front of house perspective, but the bottlers during the entire pandemic, they were they're crushing all of their quotas, breaking records, and doing all that stuff. And not once were they able to stay home. Some of [them] were immunocompromised, some have issues and they need that healthcare. One of my coworkers is diabetic, so they need that health care to afford insulin. Without it they would be absolutely screwed, [because] the healthcare system in the United States is absolutely absurd.

Our distillers are getting paid way below the industry standards. When I started looking into the UFCW… well, part of the reason we started working with the UFCW is because our colleagues at the Heaven Hill Distillery up in Bardstown [Kentucky] went on strike starting in September, and some of their grievances were similar. They were doing forced overtime, they were getting healthcare benefits cut during the pandemic. Heaven Hill had just [done] a multi-million dollar build-out of their Visitor Center.

Yeah, it was like a $19-million expansion of their visitor center, which by all accounts is gorgeous.

It is stunning. But that's a very similar situation to where we found ourselves, in and we're like, Well, they’re on strike, and we’re not. I went on to [Heaven Hill’s] website to see what they were hiring for on their bottling line [to try to oreplace those workers were on strike.] They were hiring people off the street for $21.50 an hour, when our lead bottler is making just under $20. Bardstown, Kentucky is a beautiful place to live, but it has a much lower cost of living than a city like Nashville, where we are. So those are things that we definitely took into account…. that was another sticking point for workers, seeing their colleagues getting paid astronomically higher wages [at other distilleries.] And the common denominator was the fact that [those workers] were represented by a union.

So we talked a little bit about the reception from the community, and on social media. What has the reception been like within the distillery itself?

The workers have been ecstatic. Management, not so much. It was a pretty historic blindside, because it is a very small facility, a very close knit group of people. We were able to get all those cards signed and filed without anyone really finding out in management. Based on what little they've said to us, they feel hurt. They think that this is about them, and I just want to go on the record and say it is not. We have no bad blood or ill will [towards] the supervisors and some of the managers that work at the distillery, and I just want the record to reflect that.

Some people are taking it very personally. It's not about them. It's about the workers, and it's about our grievances with Constellation.

Obviously, everyone goes into a drive with the best intentions, hoping for voluntary recognition. How likely do you think that is, in this case?

I think the company has ‘til right before Christmas to recognize us. A lot of these supervisors and managers, just keep saying that their doors open, that they're listening, and that they want to support us and make it right. And I just want to say to them: the one way to make it right is to recognize the union. So I'm hopeful. But I know that there has been at least one union-busting firm that is cold called the distillery since Friday.

I don't think it's going to work out for the corporation at this particular shop.

Like an ambulance-chaser but for union-busting.

I have their website pulled up right here. It's Midwest Management Consultants, Incorporated.

Oh god. It’s always the ones that have the most boring names that turn out to be the most evil.

Absolutely. So we'll see what happens. I hope that Constellation will come to the negotiating table in good faith. But you know, like I've said previously, we're prepared to fight and I have every confidence that we will win an election if it comes to that.

We don’t know what Constellation will do, but we know typically, what happens when companies decide to fight a union. There's a standard union-busting playbook. How are you and your coworkers preparing for that?

Yeah, the playbook is is well-known, and pretty well-worn. We have been doing meetings and talking about what to expect. We've also been very good about doing one-on-ones with one another, checking in making sure that people are doing okay, and how they feel about what we're doing. So far, morale is very high, people are very fired up, and we know everything that they're going to possibly throw at us. Everyone's been prepared for the captive-audience meetings, for all the lines about how the union’s bad actually, the union’s greedy… they're probably going to try and find all the members of the local and find their salaries to try to tell us that, they're taking your dues [as compensation.] Which is ironic, coming from a company that is run by multi-billionaires.

Like I said, I'm feel very confident. It's, it's a well-worn playbook, and I don't think it's going to work out for the corporation at this particular shop.

You mentioned at the beginning of this episode, that if you guys are successful in winning your union, that would make you Nelson's Green Brier the first unionized workforce in any Tennessee distillery. What's the significance of that to you?

That's a huge driving force. Being in a state that is not very kind to workers, not very kind to unions, we're hoping that if we're successful here—or when we're successful here, I should say—that we are going to open the door for other workers to have a higher standard of living. I think it's pretty cool to be on the forefront. But ultimately, we just want everyone to have the ability to collectively bargain with their coworkers and have a stronger, better-paid workforce.

What can people who want to support your drive do? You’re not calling for a boycott, correct? What are you asking for instead?

We're not calling a boycott or anything like that. We're not trying to be adversarial with the company, we are just asking them to bargain in good faith, we are asking them to voluntarily recognize this union. In order for us to have a voice, we have the fortune of speaking to people like you talking to local press, and trying to garner public support to help the company realize that recognition is the the best thing for the workers, and the best thing for the company. But we're calling on customers, supporters and folks to send emails through our Action Network campaign, you can send an email to the higher-ups at Constellation, politely asking them to voluntarily recognize the union and Nelson's Green Brier. That's probably the most important thing you can do at this step.

We’re talking on one of your rare days off. What are you going to do with the rest of your day off?

We're just going to try to try to relax a little bit, but also just keep checking in with the coworkers. I've been texting a lot of people who are on-site today, trying to get a general vibe for what's going on there. You know, because even though I do thankfully have a day off, I am trying make sure that everyone's ready to go in terms of what comes next from Constellation. I was told that all of the managers and supervisors are off-site today for a last-minute training.I can only imagine what that's about. So I’m just trying to stay ahead of the head of the curve here.

Congratulations again on going public with the drive.

Thanks for having me and thanks for helping amplify the cause. Solidarity forever.

***

Dylan Lancaster is a tour guide at Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery in Nashville, Tennessee. He and his coworkers are organizing to become the first unionized distillery in the state. You can follow United Distillery Workers of Tennessee on Twitter and Instagram, or learn more about their union drive here.

OTHER RECENT LABOR COVERAGE AT FINGERS:

* What can craft beer workers do about bad brewery bosses?

* The country's biggest bourbon strike in years just ended. Now what?

* "They're lowering the floor": inside the bargaining battle at the country's biggest contract brewer

* Striking against "corporate greed" at Kentucky's biggest bourbon distillery

* How the Twin Cities became a hotbed for craft beverage unionizing

Enjoy this subscriber-only episode of The Fingers Podcast with Dan Ozzi, music journalist and author of the new book Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk Emo and Hardcore 1994-2007.

As a paid-up Friend of Fingers, you can access these subscriber-only episodes wherever you get your podcasts in the future by using your private RSS feed. Instructions on how to do that are at the bottom of this post under the heading “Private feeds”:

It should be fairly simple, but if you have any trouble with that, let me know, and I’ll try to help!

Music credit: The intro/outro music to this episode of The Fingers Podcast is SKA Podcast / YouTube / Channel Intro by NaturesEye, sourced via Pixabay.

Editor’s note: Happy Friday, Fingers fam! Welcome to the 26 new Friends of Fingers who have subscribed since last week. We’re glad you’re here!

🎙️ Bonus pod: Big Beer's disturbing, deeply American vision of work and leisure

First up: for your listening pleasure, I recorded an audio read of Monday’s newsletter. Check it out in the player above, or on your preferred podcast platform:

Remember to subscribe to The Fingers Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss new episodes as I publish them. All previous episodes can be found on those platforms, or in The Fingers Podcast archive. And if you missed Monday’s edition, catch up on it right here:

📬 Good post alert

As this week comes to an end, please remember: it really can happen to anyone.

🔝This week’s top comment

The stickers I offered to the first 50 people to buy yearly subscriptions to Fingers have all been claimed, which is incredible! Shout-out to those hair-triggered Friends of Fingers who jumped on that bonus. You know who you are!

I sent out a Google Form to collect mailing addresses from the Fingers First 50, and included an optional, open-ended question in the survey: “Anything else I should know?” This field, I quickly realized, was just an open invitation to Friends of Fingers with shitposting tendencies. Some choice responses (anonymized to protect the shitposters, god bless ‘em):

* “I spent almost 2 years keeping a spreadsheet of every unique beer I bought at my local bottle shop. I’ve done absolutely nothing with that data…”

* “Dad?”

* “hi dad”

* “I probably won’t finish How to Kill a City”

* “Are you my dad?”

* “Sometimes I just like to sit in the yard and listen to the birds for a little bit.”

* “The children are drinking so much ranch water their little tummies can't handle any more beer.”

* “No :)”

Good work all around, everyone. Not to get too sappy but I think it’s pretty cool that we’re building a little community here where some of my long-running in-jokes (the “dad?” thing; no I will not explain) are mixing with general wise-assery about drinking culture, being online, and… ah, birds, I guess? If you haven’t bought a subscription yet, but like the idea of joining and supporting that community, there’s still time to score a sweet deal on a whole year of Fingers!

Anyway, to those Fingers First 50 folks that haven’t filled out the form yet: get on it! I’m mailing stickers out soon. Wanted a sticker but didn’t get one? Don’t sweat it—there will be more opportunities for Fingers swag in the near-ish future! Stay tuned.

🧾 The Bottom Shelf

The Bottom Shelf is a round-up of headlines from across the beverage landscape (plus some stray items from everywhere else) that caught my interest since last Friday. Think I missed something the Fingers faithful should know about? Drop it in the comments!

From the workweek that was:

* Cannabis Cocktails Will Be Everywhere—But Are They Even Any Good?: Fingers is institutionally pro-legalization but I’m not much of a “weed guy” myself. But this new-to-me Munchies piece from Adam Rothbarth asks the question I’ve often wondered myself: is this something drinkers actually want? One bartender he quoted thinks this space will evolve like the craft beer business has. So expect cannabis kettle sours for $27 a 4-pack in a couple years? Maybe? God help us all.

* Another lawsuit for Vitamin C Seltzer: Vizzy, Molson Coors’ biggest hard seltzer brand, is facing more class action for making claims that are allegedly “misleading and dangerous to consumers” regarding its products’ Vitamin C and superfruit content. It’s illegal to promote flavored malt beverages, or any booze, as healthful; thank the feds for that. This is like the third class-action Vizzy has dealt with about this, and it seems like a weird hill for the brand to die on. Does anybody actually buy Vizzy for the vitamins? Couldn’t you simply… change the branding a bit? Molson Coors marketers reading this: I’d love to know what sort of 4D FMB chess you’re playing. Get in touch!

* The Future of Work Should Mean Working Less: Monday’s newsletter about Busch Light’s TreeWork promo was pretty widely read according to my metrics dashboard here at Fingers HQ. This recent column in the NYT Opinion section (of all places!) mirrors a lot of the points I was driving at; if you liked my piece, you’ll like this one even more, I bet.

* On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: Not as recent, but even more relevant, is anthropologist David Graeber’s 2013 essay defining and condemning “bullshit jobs.” I read both this essay, and the book the late LSE professor expanded it into, during the pandemic. I highly recommend them both, but the essay is definitely the easier place to start.

From Monday’s newsletter:

* Is Hard Seltzer Killing the Classic College Kegger?: New from me at VinePair, a feature about what everyone’s favorite FMB is doing to the venerable campus tradition of keg parties. I won’t spoil the story for you but I will say that I was shocked by the number of college drinkers I spoke with who claimed they’d never seen a keg, period. Kids these days, etc.

* A Community Over The Barrel: Friend of Fingers, fellow newsletter operator, and food journalist par excellence has a new story about a dog-friendly Charleston beer bar that proved itself to be very unfriendly to its neighbors. It’s a great piece, and one that speaks to a bigger debate about who typically gets to decide how Southern cities grow and change, and for what reasons.

* The Bartender Who Quit Cocktails to Become a Mortician: If that headline doesn’t make you click, I don’t think anything I can write here will, either. But I enjoyed the hell out of this piece from Grub Street’s Chris Crowley.

* Out of Character: Can Lager Masquerade with an IPA Brand?: Here’s BeerCrunchers’ Doug Veliky with a smart, fun little piece of analysis on whether New Belgium’s Voodoo Ranger line—the country’s best-selling IPA family—has room for a new lager extension. Semi-related: Veliky has also leaned heavily into beer-themed TikToks lately. Follow him there or on Twitter, if you’re into that sort of thing!

📲 Everyone’s favorite Fingers meme this week

Perhaps inspired by the tale of Portland State football tailgaters rejecting Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA for Coors Light en masse, Fingers fam this week double-tapped this meme more than any other posted to the boozeletter’s official Instagram in the past seven days.

If you haven’t followed Fingers on Instagram yet, you’re missing out on free daily original content about the booze business. Don’t do that! Do this instead:

Your feed will thank you. (Not really, that would be weird. But you know what I mean.)

Enjoy this audio read of the Fingers newsletter published on 9/20/21, titled:

Remember to subscribe to The Fingers Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss new episodes as I publish them. All previous episodes can be found on those platforms, or in The Fingers Podcast archive.

Music credit: The intro/outro music to this episode of The Fingers Podcast is SKA Podcast / YouTube / Channel Intro by NaturesEye, sourced via Pixabay.