You know how earlier this year, Heaven Hill workers went on a six-week strike against their employer, which is one of the largest bourbon distilleries in Kentucky, and therefore the world? Well, about 2.5 hours to the south, across the Tennessee state line, workers at a very small whiskey distillery with a very big corporate overlord took notice. Here’s the deal. Today on The Fingers Podcast I’ve got an interview with Dylan Lancaster, a tour guide and organizer at Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery in Nashville, Tennessee. Last week, Dylan and around 35 of his coworkers went public with a union drive at their workplace, a historic Nashville whiskey maker that in 2019 was acquired by Constellation Brands, the major beverage conglomerate behind brands like Corona, Mondavi, Casa Noble, and many more. The Nelson’s Green Brier employees’ grievances are pretty familiar: low pay, bad working conditions, and unaffordable and/or inaccessible healthcare. But the way they’ve decided to address them—by forming a union with the United Food and Commercial Workers—is less so in Tennessee, a right-to-work state with one of the lowest labor union densities in the country. “Not only are we fighting a giant, multi-billion dollar corporation, but we're also doing it within a state that is not kind to unions or to workers more broadly,” Lancaster told The Fingers Podcast. “It's a bit of a David versus Goliath situation.” 🎧 This full-length interview is FREE to all subscribers on The Fingers Podcast. Interviews are usually for paying subscribers only, but I’ve unlocked this one for the whole Fingers Fam. I need your support to continue this work. Consider purchasing a subscription: In our interview, Dylan and I discussed why he and his colleagues decided to form the United Distillery Workers of Tennessee. They believe it’s the first distillery union in the Volunteer State, and they’re petitioning Constellation to voluntarily recognize the union. We got into the challenges of organizing quietly in a small shop, the perils of the American healthcare system for rank-and-file workers, and how the United Distillery Workers are hoping for good-faith treatment from their booze-biz bosses, while also bracing for the union-busting campaign that may or may not come. Dylan also told me that part of their inspiration for the drive was seeing Heaven Hill’s workers—represented by the same union, UFCW—strike their bosses over healthcare and overtime provisions. Comparing the conditions, and wages, across state lines convinced Nelson’s Green Brier workers that collective bargaining was the way to go. “They were hiring people off the street for $21.50 an hour, when our lead bottler is making just under $20,” Dylan told me, comparing the wages Heaven Hill offered scabs to those that his colleagues earn at Nelson’s Green Brier. “Those are things we definitely took into account.” Editor’s note: This interview was conducted via video call on 12/13/21. Neither Nelson’s Green Brier nor Constellation responded to Fingers’ requests for comment. The below transcript has been edited and condensed. The full-length interview is available on The Fingers Podcast. Meet Dylan Lancaster, worker & organizer at Nelson's Green Briar Distillery Dave Infante, Fingers: OK, Dylan Lancaster! Welcome to The Fingers Podcast. How you doing, man? Dylan Lancaster, Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery/United Distillery Workers of Tennessee: I'm doing fantastic. How are you? Doing well, man. You’re in Nashville, and you and your your colleagues made a little bit of news last week. What's going on in Nashville? I work at Nelson's Green Brier Distillery in Nashville, who produce Belle Meade bourbon and Nelson's Green Brier Tennessee whiskey. Me and a majority of my co-workers got together and we are in the process of forming a union with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1995. On Friday, we filed for recognition with our corporate parent company, Constellation Brands, who owns Nelson's Green Brier. So we made a bit of a splash on Friday. So it's been pretty exciting. As someone who's organized in the past, the day you go public is kind of one of the most the brightest spots in the entire campaign. What was the reception like in the community? We actually had a pretty fantastic launch day. Morale was very high at the distillery. Some of my coworkers joked that they've never seen me interact with customers quite [so] enthusiastically in a long time. On on social media, we had an Action Network campaign that went live as soon as we filed; we did that in collaboration with the Central Labor Council of Middle Tennessee, who have a pretty extensive email list. I think something like 6,000 people, [an email] went out live to all of their followers. And then we had social media push as well on our social media. As of the recording, I think we're somewhere in the ballpark of 8,000 emails sent to higher-ups within Constellation, the CEO, the executive board of directors, all the way down to our direct supervisors at the distillery. The company proved that it could pay us more, but then decided that they were not willing to do that. So you’re asking people to sign a petition calling on Constellation Brands to voluntarily recognize your union. The best case scenario is Constellation Brands wakes up tomorrow and says, These workers at Nelson's Green Brier have the right to organize, we respect that they've made a decision here, so we're going to voluntarily recognize the union and meet them at the bargaining table. Some companies do actually take that route. But if they choose not to voluntarily recognize the union, what's your understanding of what happens at that point? Then they are going to take it to an election, all we need to win the election is a simple majority of 50% [of ballots cast by eligible workers] plus one vote. So in between the day that we filed, which is Friday, the 10th of December, and whenever the election will happen, which is sometime within the next 40 days, I believe, the company is going to try to single out people and try to get votes to beat us at the election. [This] is when typically union busters are hired in outside firms, to help sway workers who have signed authorization cards into voting against the union. There was actually one branch that did organize, which was very exciting. So solidarity to the Starbucks workers, but you might know better than I but I think there was two other stores that voted on the same day and lost their elections. So how big is the proposed bargaining unit that you guys have organized down there? It's a pretty small operation. I think there's some something in the ballpark of 35 to 36 eligible workers to join the union. 80% of them have signed authorization cards. That’s an overwhelming majority. Yeah, and you only need a third to file [for union recognition.] So we did our due diligence there. Frankly, it was a pretty easy conversation… People were pretty down and ready to join up and to try and work together to increase wages and benefits. We have been, as a lot of places have been, short on staff. And so there's been a lot of burnout, a lot of long weeks and not a lot of breathing room in between shifts. So that's something that has been wearing on a lot of these workers as well. Something that's unique about this particular struggle is we could be the first unionized distillery in the state of Tennessee. And as I'm sure a lot of your listeners know, Tennessee is a “right to work” state, and they have probably the most draconian labor laws in the U.S. Or at least up there. [Tennessee must] be one of the worst on labor. So not only are we fighting a giant, multi-billion dollar corporation, but we're also doing it within a state that is not kind to unions or to workers more broadly. So it's a bit of a David versus Goliath situation. I'm recording this podcast from South Carolina… I don't know which state is worse for labor, but they're both pretty bad. Being in the South, where unions have traditionally struggled, what was your experience with organized labor? How much did you know what you were getting into, before starting this? I actually grew up in Michigan. So I come from strong labor state. But no one in my family actually ever worked for a union. I've never worked for a union. And it wasn't until I moved to Nashville and got involved with the Democratic Socialists of America, and started doing organizing through them and learning more about unions and becoming friends with union organizer, I learned a little bit more of the nuts and bolts. The conversations that I had with a lot of my co-workers, there was a lot of mystification around unions and what they do. So I had to really study up to answer a lot of those questions. I was pretty surprised. People just didn't know generally what unions did. And it wasn't ‘til after we had those conversations that it just kind of clicked and it was like, Why would we not do this? Totally. I grew up in New Jersey, and there's certainly a union presence there, but I wasn't exposed to it as a kid either. I didn't come from a union family or anything. So when I first started organizing, I had a similar experience, which is like… I felt like I was “unlearning” a lot of what I learned in like school from like the history books. There's very little labor history taught, and it's made to feel kind of like ancient history as though unions aren't relevant anymore. Exactly. Yeah, a lot of deprogramming needs to happen. There's money going somewhere, but not into the pockets of the people who are producing the products and creating the profits. So tell me how this thing came together. What are some of the major grievances that you guys organized around as you were putting together this drive? So during the beginning of the pandemic, they actually paid the front of house workers to shelter at home. So t
