‘No contract, no beer’: Molson Coors workers go on strike at Fort Worth brewery

As the union continues to negotiate for better wages and benefits at Molson Coors brewery in South Fort Worth, 420 workers continue the strike begun Feb. 17.

The union authorized a strike on Feb. 11 in case negotiations failed to yield results. The last negotiated contract between Teamsters Local 997 and Molson Coors was in 2021. Current negotiations have been ongoing since November.

Employees plan to strike until the company again meets with workers to discuss a contract that meets the union’s standards, Justin Southern, union president, said.

Company wages have not been adjusted to reflect the rising cost of living since 2021, Southern said. The union has asked for a 6-8% increase in wages the first year — to make up for the past two years of no cost of living adjustments — and subsequently a 3% adjustment each following year, he said.

The company instead offered a 2% adjustment for the first and second year, Southern said.

“All they keep putting out is, ‘We made six years of profit in one year.’ And then they come to the table and say you have a small portion of the pie, it just doesn't add up,” Southern said. “It’s corporate greed at its finest.”

Workers at the Molson Coors brewery in south Fort Worth plan to strike until a contract settlement is reached. (Sandra Sadek | Fort Worth Report) The Molson Coors facility in south Fort Worth packages and distributes products such as Topo Chico Hard Seltzer, Simply Spiked and Yuengling. The company reported a 9.4% net sales increase in 2023, generating $1.25 million in income.

For Maria Rodriguez, who has been working at the company for 33 years, seeing how much money the company made in 2023 compared to what workers are being offered is “a slap in the face.”

“It makes me feel horrible because we worked through COVID, we worked through the ice storm — a lot of us still came to work,” Rodriguez said.

In an email statement to the Fort Worth Report, Adam Collins, Molson Coors’ chief communications officer, said that while the company respects the union’s right to strike, the company has plans in place to ensure production does not stop.

“We already began producing and shipping from the Fort Worth brewery on Monday, our five other U.S. breweries have extra production capacity and we deliberately built up distributor inventories across the country. While the union has not responded to our last offer, which exceeds local market rates, we remain committed to reaching an agreement that is fair to everyone,” the statement read.

Workers at the Molson Coors brewery plan to continue striking until the union is satisfied that a new contract is settled. Jeff Pruitt, one of the negotiators, said several other unions at other Molson Coors locations did not get good contracts from the company and want to see the corporation do better.

“It’s this whole country right now. There’s a big nationwide push because people can’t pay their bills and these big corporations need to step it up just a little bit,” Pruitt said. “It ain’t like we’re being greedy. We just want to be able to have the same purchasing power that we did two years ago.”

Sandra Sadek is a Report for America corps member, covering growth for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at sandra.sadek@fortworthreport.org or @ssadek19. 

This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.