Jobs worth a fight

Published December 19, 2015

Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, Deember 17, 2015.

MillerCoors workers, their union, people in Rockingham County and their elected representatives are right to fight against the company’s decision to close the Eden brewery. They should do everything possible to reverse it — including appealing to the U.S. Senate’s antitrust subcommittee.

The brewery, which opened in 1978, employs about 520 people and pays average wages of around $60,000. The Teamsters union, which represents more than 400 of those workers, negotiated a new, three-year contract that was ratified in February, providing pay raises and lifetime health insurance for retirees and their spouses.

So it was a shock when, in September, MillerCoors announced it would close the Eden brewery within a year. It cited declining sales. The Eden plant produced 7.1 million barrels of beer in 2014. “Since the creation of MillerCoors seven years ago, volume has declined by nearly 10 million barrels,” the company said. It pointed to overlapping distribution with its brewery in Shenandoah, Va., which it said was newer and closer to Northeast markets. Unlike in Eden, the Shenandoah workforce is not represented by a union.

Phil Berger, the state Senate leader from Eden, doesn’t buy it. He and state Rep. Bert Jones (R-Rockingham) wrote a letter to a former colleague, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who now serves on the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights subcommittee, asking for an investigation.

The Eden plant is MillerCoors’ best-performing brewery, they noted. They suspect the real reason it was targeted was to facilitate a proposed merger of SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch InBev. “The only conceivable explanation is that its parent company, SABMiller, was working behind the scenes with Molson Coors, its partner in the MillerCoors joint venture, to identify and eliminate assets that would have complicated the looming merger,” their letter said. It was signed by more than 100 state legislators of both parties.

It’s tragic that hundreds of workers, the small town of Eden and a region that’s still feeling the effects of the recession will pay a high price for the profit-driven maneuvers of large, multinational corporations. We hope these efforts to intervene succeed — as unlikely as it seems that help would come from politicians who rarely stand in the way of corporate profit-seeking.

Chances are also poor that new jobs could match the pay level of those that will be lost. “Jobs that pay as well as the jobs here are not that prevalent in North Carolina,” Berger said at a Teamsters-organized rally in Eden Tuesday.

The union was instrumental in winning those high salaries, but unions generally aren’t welcome in North Carolina, which has the lowest proportion of unionized workers in the country — 1.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The next-lowest, at 2.2 percent, is South Carolina, where Republican Gov. Nikki Haley said last year: “We discourage any companies that have unions from wanting to come to South Carolina because we don’t want to taint the water.”

The North Carolina Republican Party has a page on its website telling labor unions to “stay out of North Carolina and leave our right to work laws alone!”

Yet, when hundreds of good jobs are hanging in the balance, North Carolina politicians and a labor union can suddenly find common cause.

 http://www.greensboro.com/opinion/n_and_r_editorials/our-opinion-jobs-worth-a-fight/article_ff95d2ae-16ae-5dde-8752-bcef88ad958b.html

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December 19, 2015 at 9:00 am
Richard L Bunce says:

Nonsense, using the coercive power of government to force a private business to bend to political pandering is not acceptable. Republicans are not for smaller government, just their own coercive version of big government.

December 22, 2015 at 9:32 am
Norm Kelly says:

A private business decides that a union shop should be closed in favor of a non-union shop. Is anyone surprised?

Are the jobs actually worth roughly $60,000 per year? Or is this an artificially high wage forced on the company by the union? Is life-time health care coverage really worth it to the company or is this an artificially high cost forced on the company by the union? Is this another case of a union destroying jobs instead of protecting jobs? Could the jobs have been saved if the union were not so aggressive? Instead of trying to have government jack-booted thugs attempt to force the private business to continue to operate a plant they choose not to operate, perhaps someone should approach the union thugs and ask one very important question. The answer from the union thugs would be most telling. Question: which is more important to you: maintaining jobs or forcing a business to pay as much as possible regardless of how short a period that pay lasts? Follow-up or second part of the question: if the company said that they would keep the plant open provided the union gave concessions and made costs more in line with reality, would the union go along with it or do they prefer the jobs are lost altogether?

It's almost certain, based on the history of unions, that they would refuse to answer these questions. Mostly because it would incriminate them. Their answer, if they answered honestly, would be that they prefer milking the company for as much as they can regardless of how short the milking process lasts or how many jobs it costs. Their priority is getting as much as they can. They care not one whit if the actions of a union costs anyone a job. Their priority is NOT job creation or maintaining jobs. Their priority is convincing members that paying union dues is worthwhile because the union gets them benefits. Just like Billary, you can't look behind the curtain though because the curtain hides the truth of the union's efforts.

Recently the head of SEANC was indicted for stealing money from union members. The response from the union? Typically, they defended the guilty party by claiming nothing illegal was done. So, stealing money from union members, people who work hard for their money, isn't illegal. It's just business as usual for the union, and members should simply get over it. What's changed at the offices of SEANC? Nothing. Except union members can expect their dues to continue to be pi$$ed away however the union feels it should, regardless of how immoral it may be. Typical of unions, their philosophy is 'scr3w members, we know better and will do it how we want regardless of anything else!'.

(and before anyone whines about my take on unions, yes, i have been forced to work for the machinists union in the past. most miserable experience. they threatened to kick me out of the union because i had the audacity to question what my dues paid for. they stopped talking about kicking me out when i let them know that this would save me money every paycheck AND i'd be able to keep my job. you see, it was a closed shop - forced union membership - unless the union chose to kick someone out. then the company was allowed to continue to employ that person even though not a union member. of course the union preferred that as few people as possible understood this little inconvenience. they knew that if they kicked me out and i was still employed more people would realize they could get the same treatment and union income would be negatively affected. so, yes, i've been unfortunate enough to be affected by the games played by unions. and the only thing it gained me was less take-home pay!)