The Teamsters Union is placing global union strategies at the center of its effort to protect jobs and communities that might be threatened by the takeover of Anheuser Busch. The collapsing US dollar has made it possible for the Belgian/Brazilian brewer InBev to acquire Anheuser Busch for some $52 billion depreciated greenbacks.
If shareholders and regulators approve the takeover as expected, the new company Anheuser-Busch InBev would control about 25 percent of the world beer market, easily outstripping current leader SABMiller in market share and size.
InBev itself was the product of a merger between Interbrew, a consortium of Belgian brewers, with AmBev, which resulted from a merger of Brazilian breweries Brahma and Antartica. Although still headquartered in Belgium, InBev appears to have been managed more in the ruthless style of AmBev. Although strong Belgian unions have been successful in recent years in fighting closure of the few remaining Belgian breweries, InBev did succeed in closing breweries in Canada and England over union opposition.
Giant global brewing companies are a relatively new phenomenon, driven mainly by the desire to control a stable of global brands. Theoretically this results in economies of scale, particularly in logistics, distribution and marketing. However the Teamsters Union, which represents more than 7,000 A-B employees under a good national contract, said pressing questions remain about InBev’s ability to keep pledges it has made about the future of A-B. InBev has promised that it will not close any of A-B’s 12 U.S. breweries and will not make significant job cuts-instead saying it will generate cash to help finance the purchase from better supply chain management and selling off “non-core” assets. But it will require a lot of cost savings to service the debt that the purchase will entail.
“We applaud InBev’s pledge not to close breweries and to keep job losses at a minimum. However, InBev’s history and the debt involved in this sale raise the issue of whether InBev can come through on those promises,” said Jack Cipriani, director of the Teamsters Brewery and Soft Drink Workers Conference and Teamsters Vice President. Cipriani said that the Teamsters have requested an immediate meeting with InBev executives to discuss the future of Anheuser Busch and its workforce.
The Teamsters have established the useful Budwatch website to report on the issue to its members and to the general public.
Cipriani has also asked the global union federation IUF to convene a meeting of union representatives from InBev’s breweries worldwide to coordinate strategy. The IUF union network within InBev has been active for several years, featuring a global strategy meeting of unions representing InBev workers in Sao Paulo, Brazil in November 2005. The Brewery and Soft Drinks Workers Conference of the Teamsters has already made a substantial contribution to the IUF’s global union network within Coca-Cola, and its active participation in a coordinated union strategy for Anheuser Busch InBev should be beneficial for all brewery workers around the world.
Filed under: Economy, Global organizing, Solidarity | Tagged: Anheuser Busch, beer, brewery, Budweiser, InBev
One unresolved question in the InBev acquisition of Anheuser Busch is the fate of Grupo Modelo, Mexico’s largest bottler (producer of Corona). A-B owns a non-controlling 50% share of Modelo, which is controlled by Maria Asuncion Aramburzabala, Mexico’s richest woman (who is married to U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza). Industry analysts say it is likely that InBev will move relatively soon to acquire the rest of Modelo.
Modelo’s labor rights record has recently been questioned. At its bottling plant in San Luis Potosi, the com[any fired 300 workers in January, including the entire leadership of the independent union SUTEIVP (which last year won a 19% wage increase). Modelo then gave a pro-company union, affiliated to the CROC federation, unfettered access to the workforce. The CROC and management launched a campaign of intimidation culminating in an “election” on May 9 in which workers had to vote publicly in front of management and CROC representatives (the SUTEIVP leaders were not allowed in the plant). The SUTEIVP has filed complaints wiht the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association and with the Mexican National Contact Point under the ILO Guidelines on Multinational Corporations.
Ben’s report is very informative and I will alert the brewery unions involved in the Anheuser Busch Inbev merger. Keep us updated, Ben.
[...] Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to protect its members faced with the acquisition of Anheuser Busch by the global brewing giant InBev. On October 3 the Teamsters announced that the Conference, the [...]