In 2018, I wrote a story for Splinter about the craft brewing industry’s vexingly low density of labor unions. Workers I spoke with back then were frustrated about low pay, bad or nonexistent healthcare benefits, strenuous and unsafe working conditions, and so forth. I got what reporters call a “money quote” from a frustrated pro-union craft brewer in the Pacific Northwest. “There are people making money here,” he told me. “But it’s not us.”
A lot has changed since then. For one thing, Splinter got shut down, then resurrected, which may be why my byline is no longer on the story in question. For another, the craft brewing boom is well and truly over. Many of the craft brewery owners that did big business in 2018 are clinging to their businesses in 2024 — or have already shuttered them. There are still people making money in the industry, no doubt, but gone are the salad days of the second craft beer boom. One thing that really hasn’t changed in the last half-dozen years, not at a meaningful scale at least, is the industry’s union density. Despite it all — the low salaries, the widespread discrimination, the f*cking pandemic — I can still count the number of unionized craft breweries across the country on two hands. I’ve written about the reasons for this many times before, and I will not rehash them here. The fact of the matter is, the overwhelming majority of craft brewery workers remain without unions at a
