By Dick Cantwell

Get Up, Stand Up, Don't Give Up Your Beer

A few weeks ago, as I was leading a tour of the brewery in which I work, a man interrupted me to ask if it didn't bother my former employer that I had gone to work for "the competition." I said I didn't think so; that I had worked there for almost three years and now I worked here; my leaving to work for another brewery had never been an issue. This struck him as strange, and he observed that in light of the suit recently brought by an Oregon brewery against a former employee who had become involved in a plan for a new brewery after having signed a contract containing a non-compete clause, my ex-boss had really been very good about allowing people to go on to other jobs after leaving his company. I suppressed an indignant reaction, and pretty much let it go by saying that I had never signed a contract with my old place of employ, and would never have agreed to such a ludicrous constraint as that implemented by that other brewery. This may or may not have satisfied him, but we went on with the tour.

An experienced brewer I know recently moved to a new city, where he immediately began looking for work. He interviewed with a couple of micros, and was called back to one of them for another look. This particular brewery, it should be mentioned, had not long before lost three of its senior staff members in a flap having mainly to do with the fact that one of them had had the temerity to investigate the possibility of another brewery job, and despite some three years of bullishly loyal service was summarily fired. Its head brewer had left not long before that, and it suddenly found itself with a staff of enthusiastic but drastically inexperienced employees. Despite the brewery's obvious need for someone -- anyone -- with experience, and the fact that the new brewer in town had been in charge of the medal-winning brewery he had left not long before, the brewery owner remained cautious. He called the brewer back for a third, a fourth and a fifth interview before deciding to pass in favor of adding another couple of employees with no professional brewery experience whatsoever. These people were immediately swept into the whirlwind familiar to many fledgling employees of breweries working past capacity: sixty- to seventy-hour weeks, inconsequential pay, and the over-riding atmosphere of inadequacy to the insurmountable task -- nothing, in short, was quite enough to get the job done. A couple of months later one of the fledgling employees at this brewery loosened the clamp on the top of an upright sheet filter before relieving the interior pressure -- something on the order of fifty to sixty pounds per square inch. The lid caught him full in the face, nearly tearing his nose off and causing a wound requiring thirty stitches to close. He could have lost an eye, or his teeth; he could conceivably have been killed. Though one can't say so with absolute certainty, it's doubtful that the quintuply-interviewed former head brewer would have made such a mistake, even under the frenzied circumstances.

Another brewer I know, who holds a fairly junior position in a brewery crowded with gifted and experienced brewers, some months back made a connection with the owner of a brewery in another state poised for expansion who was looking for a couple of key employees. After letters, a visit, and a lot of conversation, an offer was extended conditional on ironing out a couple of details. Not wanting to ask for too much yet wanting to at least hold steady in what she had come to command at her present job, especially as a substantial move involving a partner was potentially in the offing, the brewer put forth her modest requirements, the same rate of pay she was getting at her present job and a health insurance plan roughly equivalent to what she already had. The owner, who it might be mentioned had no doubt over-eagerly led the brewer to believe that she was to be on track to be head brewer, gushing that such a thing would be possible given that the present head brewer had taught and contributed all he was liable to where the growth of the brewery was concerned, considered the requirements excessive, and withdrew the offer.

Back in the early eighties, when the microbrewery movement was aspiring to a foothold in the vast commercial scheme of things, a lot of people worked long hours for little pay in the service of their dream. With the odd grizzled exception, these people were fairly young, and could manage on a little money and a lot of excitement as they fanned the near-dead embers of a once-vital American brewing industry. Those people, and many of those who followed them, are no longer twenty-two years old. They are numerously at the point in life when they want to stay in one place, have families, or buy houses. They deserve these things. And with the number of hazards built into the processes of making beer, they certainly deserve health insurance. Having reeled off close to a couple of decades, the movement is definitely maturing, but in an awful lot of cases, its brewers aren't being allowed to. In fact, they're broadly being exploited, expected to put in workweeks not seen since the industrial revolution, for wages insufficient to the hope of an improving financial life; subjected to risks unequal to their training and experience; constrained even from getting on with their professional lives once they've left their jobs for something ostensibly better.

Now don't get me wrong. It's not all as bad as that. A lot of breweries are progressive, equitable companies who give their employees a decent wage and fair shake. I'm very happy with my situation, for example. But I know I've been lucky. In just over four years of professional experience I've been head brewer at two breweries, and every step has been pretty dizzyingly upward. I don't make as much as Bobby Bonilla (even when he's on strike), but I have what I consider one of the best brewing jobs around, all things considered. Each of my jobs has been very good for me. Not all the endings of the stories I've told are unhappy, either. The never-bitten, five-times cautious brewery owner may not have seen the merit in hiring a brewer with three years' experience to rescue the integrity of his operation, but another brewery in the same city has since seen pretty expeditiously fit to put him to work (the medics did a great job sticking the guy's nose back on, too). The brewer who nearly left town to chase the dream yonder is happy to have her job and her friends nearby for the foreseeable future. And as I said, I'm happy where I am, reserve-clause thinking occasionally notwithstanding. But there is a lot of unfairness afoot, enough for us all to have heard those discomfiting union rumblings. I don't think that's the answer, but until the money-holding participants in our exciting, successful movement see fit to fairly appreciate and compensate the committed and accomplished workers, artists and technicians who constitute its heart, the urgings of the retrograde and wild-eyed can only gain adherents.