Woodford Reserve undermined unionization efforts at its Kentucky distillery by granting raises, relaxing vacation policies and handing out bottles of whiskey to workers before voting on whether to unionize, ruled a federal judge.
The sweeteners the prominent bourbon maker offered to workers were timed to influence the outcome of the union vote, Andrew S. Gollin, an administrative law judge at the National Labor Relations Board, wrote in his decision Monday.
The 2022 unionization effort failed, but Gollin set aside the election results and said Woodford Reserve and its parent company should recognize and negotiate with a local Teamsters union. Woodford Reserve is part of spirits giant Brown-Forman Corp., based in Louisville, Kentucky.
“Overall, the timing and circumstances surrounding these actions are more than sufficient to infer unlawful motivation,” Gollin wrote in his decision.
The company said it took each of the actions in question for legitimate business reasons unrelated to the union campaign. But the judge disagreed, saying the company engaged in unfair labor practices that violated the National Labor Relations Act. The company failed to prove that the wage increase, relaxed vacation policy and whiskey giveaway would have happened without the union campaign, he said.
Brown-Forman said it is reviewing the ruling and determining next steps. The judge’s order can be appealed to the NLRB. The decision was also significant because it was the administrative law judge’s second bargaining order since the NLRB established a new framework for union elections last year, said Kayla Blado, a spokeswoman for the board.
Joe Lance, vice president and business agent of Teamsters Local 651, said the judge made the “right decision.”
“This is a clear example of unlawful interference in what should have been a free and fair election,” Lance said in a statement. “We hope this serves as a deterrent to other employers, who will hopefully think twice before violating federal labor law. laws.”
Recent years have seen periods of labor unrest in Kentucky’s famed bourbon industry, including strikes involving prominent producers including Jim Beam, Four Roses and Heaven Hill.
The Woodford Reserve union campaign began in August 2022 at the historic distillery in the heart of Kentucky’s picturesque bluegrass region. The main motivation was the search for higher wages.
Before the election, distillery managers told employees they would get an across-the-board raise of $4 per hour. Employees started seeing the increase in their paychecks about a week before the election. After the wage increase was announced, employees’ interest in the union waned, the judge noted.
Woodford also changed its raise and vacation policy, then handed out a bottle of Double Oaked whiskey to each production worker a week before the election, worth about $30.
Once the elections took place, the count showed 14 votes in favor of unionization and 45 votes against.
The union responded by filing an unfair labor practice charge. After the pay increase, an employee told a union organizer that he was taking “the bribe” and no longer supported the union, the judge noted. Another employee indicated that he accepted the pay increase and “withdrew.” The company said the pay increase was intended to address employee retention and recruitment issues.
Woodford had given an across-the-board wage increase of $1 an hour earlier this year. Interest in organizing a union grew afterward as workers viewed the raise as insufficient, the judge noted.
The decision to relax pay and vacation policies was due to a change in human resources leadership, the company said. And pouring a bottle of whiskey was nothing more than a morale booster routinely given to Woodford employees for a variety of reasons, including meeting production goals, the report said.
The judge saw it differently. He said the pay and furlough actions were intended to undermine support for the unionization campaign, while the whiskey awards were intended to influence the vote.