Beer distributor settles dispute with Teamsters

Modern Brewery Age, Feb 6, 1995

An eight-month dispute between the Teamsters union and a St. Louis, MO-based Miller beer distributor has ended.

St. Louis Beer Sales agreed Tuesday to offer jobs to 18 laid-off union drivers by May 1996. It also agreed to pay $5,000 to each of the 45 union workers who lost their jobs when the distributor took over Riverfront Distributing Co. last May.

In return, Brewery Drivers Local 133 said it would end a boycott of Miller products. The union said more than 250 bars, liquor stores and restaurants had stopped carrying Miller beer to show support for workers.

A recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board in favor of the union helped resolve the dispute, a union official said. The NLRB said St. Louis Beer Sales discriminated against the Teamsters, and the company could have been forced to hire 34 union drivers. Thomas Stillman, chairman of St. Louis Beer Sales. denied at the time that his business discriminated against the drivers. He said that hiring them would have forced him to lay off other employees.