Many companies would rather their workers didn’t form unions, because union workers tend to make more money and take less shit than non-union workers, and don’t have to pretend they think of their bosses like “family.”
So companies will often try to kibosh their workers’ organizing efforts. Owners and managers like to call this practice “union avoidance,” or simply “persuading,” which is somehow both less and more revealing. Workers, unions, and their allies have another term for it: “union-busting.”
Regardless of what you call it, Sapporo-Stone Brewing is currently doing it.
Late last month, I broke the news that workers at Stone’s plant here in Richmond, Va., were organizing with Teamsters Local 322, a branch of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The drive began in 2023 shortly after Sapporo USA unceremoniously handed Anchor Brewing Company’s 150-plus-year legacy over to liquidators and pivoted its American ambitions to the East Coast outpost of the San Diego-based craft brewery it’d bought the year prior. Stone Richmond workers told VinePair they were organizing for all the standard stuff: better pay, conditions, and scheduling.
In early June, before the drive even went public, Sapporo-Stone Brewing (SSB) caught wind of it. There are few secrets in brewhouses, after all. The firm, which had just completed a $40 million renovation on the brewery to boost its capacity to pump out fresh Sapporo Premium for the U.S. market, did something pretty standard, too. It began trying to bust the union.
It’s important to be explicit that this doesn’t
