Outside the Molson Coors Brewery in Fort Worth, workers are entering their third month on strike for better wages, benefits and working conditions.
As the fifth-largest brewery in the world, the plant produces some of the most well-known alcoholic beverages like Miller Lite, Coors Lite, Topo Chico and Vizzy.
To the people on the picket lines, the brewery is their livelihood.
”My first three years out here it felt like a real family,” Talmadge Spivey, a Molson Coors employee, said. “People looked after each other. It was actually fun coming to work. We didn’t mind working the 12 or 16 hours because of the environment and the camaraderie of the employees.”
After 18 years of loyalty, Spivey no longer feels the same sense of appreciation he once did: “They started taking back more of our benefits and just the morale of the place kind of went down after that.”
The workers’ union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, provides members with strike benefits of $1,200 per week and free insurance.
Rick Miedema, the secretary-treasurer of the local union 997, said the strike is sustainable as they have a strike and defense budget of over $300 million.
“Right now we want them to boycott,” Miedema said. “We don’t want them to drink any Coors products.”
Spivey hopes the combined efforts of the employees and consumers will create equality amongst his fellow employees and thus the continued enjoyment of their products.
“We hate that we are out here. We didn’t want to strike, but we have to stand up sooner or later to get what we deserve,” Spivey said. “We deserve this. It’s not what we want, but what we deserve. It’s what we earned.”
“The company failed to negotiate a contract in good faith to the workers out here,” said Miedema. “We have several fair labor charges pending with the National Labor Relations Board against the employer and we are in the process right now to come to an agreement to get everybody back to work.”
Although negotiations have failed, Miedema said the employees are in it for the long haul.
“They are trying to break the union apart and get people to cross the picket lines, but we aren’t going to do that.”
