After Amazon Staten Island workers unionise, Brewdog next?
Workers at a giant Amazon workplace at Staten Island NY have voted 2,654 to 2,131 to unionise with the grassroots led Amazon Labour Union. Needless to say Jeff Bezos is virulently anti-union and commentators have hailed it as the greatest union victory in a generation.
Perhaps the next stop should be Brewdog of Ellon. The size of the company is nowhere near that of Amazon but it is just as strongly anti-union.
After a series of complaints from former and current workers about a ‘toxic workplace’ culture, Brewdog has threatened legal action but also claimed to be engaging in a process of mediation via @handandheart_eu who are presenting numbers of those who have raised issues in various locations around the globe.
Recent developments suggest that Brewdog are not really engaging with the mediation and reconciliation process seriously and I’m afraid that is no surprise. Employer-employee relations can of course be handled in an agreed framework and disagreements dealt with. Industrial action and strikes can and do occur but only where there are fundamental differences. Individual issues and concerns and wider workplace problems are handled by negotiation.
That is done by a trade union, entirely independent of the employer, whose funding comes from the subs of its members, and has a democratic structure allowing those members to influence and guide policy.
Some employers however eschew all that and prefer class war. Amazon and Brewdog are two examples. They will claim they prefer a direct relationship with employees, or to put it another way one without transparency or agreed process.
As Amazon underlines unions can still win recognition via laws(which exist in the US and UK) which require companies to recognise and negotiate with unions where membership levels justify it.
Unite (Hospitality) has membership at Brewdog and Unite under the current General Secretary Sharon Graham has shown itself ready to stand up to rogue employers. Let’s hope there is a positive way out of the situation Brewdog is currently in, not just for its workers but for the reputation of craft beer too.
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