TOAST SUDS & BUDS
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“We’ve even studied how to incorporate the UAW logo onto materials and make sure it’s getting equal billing — those are the kinds of things we think about,” said Quinn.
Working in specific teams to handle different beer lines and facets of production, the staffers — “technicians,” in Quinn’s terms — are responsible for their own schedules, including overtime and vacation. They also pay themselves.
But more than that, techs set and meet their own production goals, define and improve the quality of their work, troubleshoot and problem-solve along their product lines and handle their own internal issues when disputes crop up.
They also have a budget and are expected to keep to it.
“We have autonomy here,” Holub said. “For a blue-collar worker, that’s everything.”
To keep the pace flowing, MillerCoors asks techs to hold a 30-minute planning meeting at the start of every shift — on overtime pay.
“It’s worth it,” Quinn (inset below) said, noting that the Trenton plant is among the highestperforming of MillerCoors’ seven beer facilities, five of which are unionized.
It has the capacity to pump out 11 million barrels of beer a year — which nearly matches the annual output of the company’s much larger flagship factory in Colorado.
Its fastest production lines produce 1,700 bottles of beer a minute and 2,200 cans. They whiz by quicker than the eye can see, but some veteran technicians like Ron (Hot Rod) Lowe can pluck a beer from the speeding conveyor belt without causing a ripple anywhere down the line.
While the brewery declined to give specifics about its profit margins, they’re good enough that for nearly 30 years nobody has messed with a winning formula, Quinn said. “There was a decision in 1991 by the corporation to make this a high-performance facility — we wanted it to be better and different than all the others, and we’ve worked hard to make it happen.”
MillerCoors built the 1,056acre property in the 1980s to meet an anticipated surge in demand for Miller beer that didn’t quite materialize in the Midwest. So the factory — perched atop the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer, the source of its water — sat empty for the next decade.
It might have remained untapped forever if not for the 1990s popularity of Miller Genuine Draft.
The plant fired up in 1991 and the “experiment in the cornfields,” as the techs call the brewery, opened its doors.
Right away, there was a rush from various unions to organize the staff — and UAW won out mainly because of its name recognition. Many of the brewery applicants were laid-off auto workers whose jobs went overseas.
The plant now employs 420 UAW techs and nearly 100 salaried staff. The benefits include six weeks vacation and a quarterly “goal-sharing” bonus employees get when they meet or exceed production quotas.
Holub snorted when asked if the starting wage was above $12 an hour. “Nobody here is working for anything even close to that,” he said. “This is one of the best-paying jobs around. The pay is very competitive.”
UAW Local 2308 has been able to keep its members’ pay and benefits well above the Ohio average in part because the union made a conscious choice to partner with management on momentous decisions.
“We don’t simply default to an adversarial role,” Holub noted.
That’s how the two sides came up with the “living document” they call their Operational Guidelines. While the Local 2308 collective bargaining agreement covers wages, benefits, work hours and other elements of employee compensation, the guidelines govern plant operations.
“It’s a huge benefit for us, because when we need to tweak something we don’t have to make a formal ask and wait for negotiations and alter the entire” bargaining agreement, said Quinn (photo below). “We sit down, we talk it through and together we make a decision.” The system has worked so well that Holub recently inked the union’s first five-year bargaining agreement with the company. “Usually our contracts are three years long, but we are confident and comfortable enough with the people here to go for five years,” he said. “The trust is there.” The ability to adapt quickly to market needs without lengthy negotiations has also helped the MillerCoors Trenton Brewery survive tough times. In the early 2000s, the plant went through some lean years — especially because, at the same time, it was shaving jobs to make room for automation.
UAW’s contract gave workers some protections, but the specter of deep layoffs loomed.
Through a combined effort, Quinn and Holub kept everybody on staff, sometimes by picking up jobs that were formerly done by nonunion workers.
“Whenever we did, we made sure the plant knew we did it better and it cost less than what they had been paying,” Holub said.
At the same time, UAW didn’t fight the uphill battle of trying to hold on to every job title. As workers retired, the union let the natural attrition happen — and focused on training remaining workers to manage, run and service the computers and robots invading the brewery.
The plant has fewer employees than it did 10 years ago, but those that remain are highly skilled at operating the technology that helps keep the plant in the black.
And during the nearly 10year hiring freeze, the two sides managed to address a dicey topic that’s been the destruction of many a solid working relationship: dissolving the union’s defined benefit pension plan.
“The timing was right for the change, we hadn’t hired in quite some time,” said Holub. “I took it to the members, and they were OK with it.”
UAW Local 2308 always had a defined contribution plan, but got a bigger match for 401(k)s in return, he added. “It was a very fair deal.”
Having gotten through those difficult times, the challenge Quinn and Holub now face is carrying the progress forward.
“We talk about it — about what will happen when we’re gone,” said Quinn, who has known Holub nearly 26 years. “The way I feel is that if this doesn’t continue without us, than I’ve failed as a manager. Because we’re the ones training the next group of leaders.”
It’s difficult to know if the alchemy will continue without the two main architects of the program’s success.
Yet Quinn and Holub have no shortage of experienced hands to draw from — and they have no problem attracting new talent.
Getting hired there isn’t easy, though. For one thing, there’s a behavioral assessment and a panel interview. “It’s all about the right fit,” said Quinn.
The brewery is also actively trying to widen its pool to bring in more women and overall diversity. It also pays special attention to veterans. More than 20% of its staff served in the military.
But the collaborative environment doesn’t just happen organically, Quinn added. The union and the company together and separately hold numerous empowerment meetings and discussion groups to improve relations and production — and most of all, to keep employees feeling connected and vested in their careers.
“It’s a relationship, and it takes a lot of work,” Quinn said. “But we do these things and offer the benefits that we do because I believe, and I work for a company that has always believed, that it’s the right thing to do.”
She has the right partner in the UAW, which often brings in union leaders from other locals to study the Trenton model.
“This proves that it can be done — you can have union jobs in America that provide good wages and still make a company profitable,” said Gary Jordan, the international representative of UAW.
“Now we have to find ways to make more of these relationships happen.”