FORT WORTH, Texas — With the ongoing strike at the Molson Coors brewery in Fort Worth now in its second month, the union is promising to hold the line -- and scoffing at the company's bargaining efforts.
On Thursday, members of the Teamsters Local 997 issued a statement announcing that it had broken off mediated negotiations with Molson Coors after the company failed to include "real wage increases" in its proposed new three-year worker contract. According to the Teamsters, after 41 days of the brewers' 24/7 strike following Molson Coors' "original degrading offer of 99-cent per hour raises" in a new worker contract, the company's latest proposal offered "just five more cents per hour" over the initially offered deal.
The Fort Worth brewery, located at 7001 South Freeway, opened in 1969 and became the home of Miller Lite in 1975. According to the Molson Coors website, 520 employees work at the Fort Worth facility. Molson Coors is among the largest beverage companies in the work, and products produced at the Fort Worth site include Miller Lite, Coors Light, Yuengling, PBR and Topo Chico.
Workers at the Fort Worth brewery are asking for pay increases, improved health care and retirement benefits. Of its 420 union members, 93% of Local 997 Molson Coors Teamsters voted to reject their employers' contract offer prior to going on strike.
Conversely, Teamsters representatives said 86% of the employees at Molson Coors competitor Anheuser-Busch voted in late February to approve a new five-year national contract that increased pay, improved health care and retirement benefits, and protected all members’ jobs.
Just prior to the union announcing its strike, Molson Coors' shared that its fourth-quarter 2023 earnings were the company’s highest since 2005. A few months earlier, in October 2023, Molson Coors announced a $2 billion stock buyback for its shareholders. According to the Teamsters, Molson Coors CEO Gavin Hattersley has earned more than $5.1 million as part of his salary since the local union went on strike on Feb. 17.
"Molson Coors is a total disgrace," Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement. "This isn’t a serious offer from one of America’s biggest beer companies. It’s an example of the willful disrespect it has for the American workers behind its products. Molson Coors doesn’t care about Texas workers or their hard labor or the sacrifices their families have made to make the company rich.... It shouldn’t be difficult for Molson Coors to agree to a respectable contract, unless their goal is to deprive workers of fair wages and strip them of good benefits and job protections.”
This weekend, Teamsters plan to protest outside of NCAA March Madness events -- of which Molson Coors is a major corporate sponsor -- while "informing and urging the public to boycott Molson Coors products throughout the college basketball tournament."
Reached for comment, Molson Coors’ chief communications officer Adam Collins provided WFAA the following statement.
"We remain committed to doing what’s right for everyone and reaching a fair agreement in Fort Worth, so it’s disappointing that the union has chosen this approach," the statement read. "We’ve offered highly competitive wages and benefits off an already strong base and participated in nearly 40 negotiating sessions with the union as we work towards a deal."