Seniority Remains Sticking Point in Busch Driver Strike

Anheuser-Busch’s Sylmar distribution plant has responded to an 11-week-old drivers’ strike by using management personnel to keep the beer flowing to retailers.

Negotiators for the plant and for Local 896 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America will meet today to discuss issues dividing them, according to a union official.

About 45 management personnel have been making deliveries since the strike began March 16, according to a plant spokesman.

Seventy-seven Teamsters walked off the job after the last of several contract extensions ran out. According to Anheuser-Busch spokesman Russell Bell, management made its first offer before the original contract ran out Oct. 1 and has since made two offers.

Chuck Roberts, secretary-treasurer of Local 896, said the most important issue to the workers is seniority. He said drivers believe that a new demand-based delivery system sought by management in the new contract--under which they would work only as they are needed--would take away guarantees that senior employees have a full weekly work schedule.

Roberts said the drivers also believe that the new system could result in layoffs and demands that the remaining drivers work overtime.

Also at issue is the wage scale for drivers, according to Roberts. He said drivers are paid $11.70 an hour, plus a 10-cent commission for each case delivered above 1,500 cases per week. The union has demanded a wage increase of 65 to 75 cents per hour each year for the next three years. Roberts said that in its most recent offer, rejected by the union May 27, management offered an increase of 45 cents per hour in the first year and 35 cents per hour in each of the next two years. The offer did not respond to the union’s seniority concerns, he said.

Through the plant spokesman, General Manager Paul Nickel declined to comment, but issued a statement that said the present offer “is as good or better than any contract currently in force in the Los Angeles area at Anheuser-Busch wholesalerships or those of our competitors.”

Continue to Deliver

Nickel also vowed to continue deliveries. “We hope this matter can be resolved shortly,” Nickel said in the statement. “Until it is, we will continue to deliver to our retailers using Anheuser-Busch management personnel.”

According to Greg Allossery, Sylmar shop steward for Local 896, a similar strike is in effect at an Anheuser-Busch distribution plant in Louisiana.

Jeff Davis, an Anheuser-Busch spokesman in St. Louis, confirmed that 76 Teamsters have been on strike at a plant in Metairie, near New Orleans, for a month. He would not comment on whether the same issues are involved in the Metairie strike.