Unions at Ballantine

    "(In March, 1886) a brewery workers' organization was formed in Newark. The condition of the brewery workers here was a particularly bad one. On weekdays the daily work often amounted to from fifteen to eighteen hours, and to this was added frequently Sunday labor of about ten hours, so that the brewers hardly ever had an hour to themselves. Besides this, the monthly wage of the skilled brewers was only $40 per month and that of the unskilled hands correspondingly less.

    "In Newark as in New York the organization of the brewery workers was taken in hand by the Knights of Labor. First they organized the employees of the Geier Brewery, which is now known as the Home Brewery, into the "Enterprise Assembly" of the Order, and on March 21, 1886, a general meeting of the brewery workers of Newark was called and Brewers' Union No. 2 was formed, which is still in existence."

    "In the neighboring city of Newark, N. J., where a comparatively large brewing industry has developed, the material conditions of the workingmen in the industry are in the main the same as those prevailing in New York. But the brewers there have succeeded in obtaining the eight-hour day. The number of organized workingmen in this industry in Newark is about 1,100, of whom 460 are in Local Union No. 2, 450 in the beer drivers' and stablemen's union No. 148, and 180 in the union of bottled-beer workers. The wages of the brewers are about the same as those in New York; the maltsters get $16 to $18, the beer drivers and stablemen $13 to $19 a week with a ten-hour day, and the bottled-beer workers receive $10 to $16, also working ten hours."

--- THE BREWING INDUSTRY & THE BREWERY WORKERS MOVEMENT IN AMERICA

Herman Schulter - 1910 - The Int. Union United Brewery Workmen  of America

Newark area brewery locals

KNIGHTS OF LABOR - Newark District 51

Ale and Porter Journeymen Brewers' Association

BREWERY WORKERS UNION (AFL/Ind./CIO)

Brewery Workmen's Union of New York and Vicinity

"Brewers' Union No. 2" (Brewing Dept.) 1 (> AFL - 1947 and 1953)

Beer Drivers and Stablemen's Union Local 148 2 (> IBT - 1942)

Beer Bottlers Union (Bottling and Delivery Department) Local 268 3 (> IBT - 1942)

(Above made up > ) Newark Brewery Workers Joint Board

Maltsters' Union, Local 171

1912 - United Brewery Workmen Newark locals

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INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS + other AFL

Brewery Workers Joint Local Executive Board of NJ (IBT- included Locals 24251 > 4, 153 and 843)

1 AFL Federal Labor Union #24251 - Brewhouse Workers*  (>IBT Local 4) 

*Jurisdiction: "All employees employed in the brewing department, at the kettles, coolers, filters, carbonizers, rackers and in the wash house.”

1a Brewery, Syrup, Yeast & Grain Workers Local 4 IBT

2 Local 153 Teamsters - (AFL/Ind.) Keg Beer Handlers Union

3 Local 843 Teamsters  (AFL/Ind.) - Bottled Beer  Drivers, Warehousemen, Bottlers and Helpers-

  1b Local 102 Teamsters BREWERY, INDUSTRIAL, PROFESSIONAL AND PUBLIC EMPLOYEES  aka Technical Teamsters (Ind.) - Local 102 "Brewers & Machinists"

Originally the revived CIO Brewery Workers Local 2 (Anheuser-Busch employees) which voted to join the Teamsters in July, 1953.  AB and Rheingold white collar workers also belonged to Local 102, voting for unionization in 1959 and 1967. 

In 1970, brewery workers at the Stegmaier and The Lion (aka Gibbons) breweries in Wilkes-Barre, PA., voted to disaffiliate from UBW Local 163 and joined IBT Local 102.  4 years later, another election was held and Gibbons worked voted to leave the IBT and rejoined the AFL-CIO as a Directly-Affiliated Local Union - Brewery Workers Local 3067.  Soon after, Stegmaier closed.

102 also organized beer distributors and other non-brewing companies as well as public workers.

Beer distributor drivers on strike, 1987

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Other labor unions which had contracts with P. Ballantine & Sons

     Cooper International Union of North America (AFL) "Beer, Ale and Brewery Coopers"   Local  134

International Association of Machinists Dist. 47 - Lodge 340

International Union of Steam And Operating Engineers, Local Union No. 68 of Essex County, Harrison, Kearny and Elizabeth

International Union of Journeymen Horseshoers of the US and Canada, Local 22, Newark, NJ (1908)

Beer Pipe & Block Tin Workers  (AFL-CIO)  [Voted to join Teamsters Local 843 - 1961]

Wholesale Licensed Alcoholic Beverage Salesmen’s Union #20376-B (Beer Division) (NYC - Plaza office)

    Falstaff era 

North Bergen Distribution Depot (NY-NJ)

IBT Local 153 (1972 - 1975)

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IBT Local 114 (Cranston, RI) 

Brewery Workers Beer Drivers and Soft Drink Workers

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IBT Local 1162 (Ft. Wayne, IN)

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IBT Local 554 (Omaha, NE)

Walter Ruhnke had been Secretary of Newark's Local 2

Otto Ruhnke - likely the father  - had been the president of  Brewers Union No. 2 and  would also run for Essex County Assembly on the Socialist Party line in 1912.  He was born in Germany, emigrated to the US in 1880, with his earliest listing as a "brewer" in Newark was 1889. 

Walter's brother, Otto, Jr., was a brewer for the Orange Brewing Co. in the late 1910s and would be working for Krueger in the early 1940s.  Another brother, Edward, also worked for Orange and, after Repeal, at Feigenspan.

As an officer of Brewers Union No. 2, Walter Ruhnke would introduce a resolution in support of labor martyr Tom Mooney at the 1917 New Jersey AFL Convention.

He would later be associated with the leftist International Labor Defense organization in the mid-1930s, as a member of their local Trade Union Advisory Committee.

Delegate to the 1950 UBW Convention.

Merker apparently also worked for the state CIO, getting involved in a 1952 dispute between the AFL Amalgamated Meat Cutters, Local 464 and workers who wished to switch to the CIO.

 In 1953, he would be among BW Local 2's leaders who left the CIO union for the AFL's Teamsters, chartered as IBT Local 102 - "Brewery, Industrial, Professional and Public Employees".   He would go on to be a long-time officer of  that Teamsters' local serving as its secretary-treasurer and president, representing workers at Newark breweries like Rheingold, Pabst and Anheuser-Busch as well as organizing numerous non-brewing industry companies.  Along with many other NJ brewery Teamsters, he also opposed Jimmy Hoffa's re-election in 1958 during the period when the AFL-CIO was investigating the Teamsters for corruption, eventually expelling the International in 1957.[ABOVE] Unknown Newark Brewery Workers CIO Local 2 strikers picket Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis.

RETURN TO P. BALLANTINE & SONS HOME PAGE

25 years after the Repeal of Prohibition, 4 AFL Teamster locals represented the brewery workers of the Newark region's 6 breweries plus Hoffman Beverage Co*., at the time owned by Pabst.  The Joseph Hensler Brewing Co. would close in 1958, the year before the contract expired.

* Hoffman, primarily a soft drink company, built a new brewery at the end of Prohibition, which was purchased by Milwaukee's Pabst Brewing Co. in 1945. Hoffman, incidentally, experienced numerous strikes under both Brewery Workers and Teamster contracts, with the firm even being on the Brewery Workers "UNFAIR" list in 1926 during Prohibition.

NOTES

There was a fifth International Union of United Brewery & Soft Drink Workers of America local in Newark - Soft Drink Workers Local #238 was chartered by the International in October, 1933 (so, technically, still the Prohibition period since full Repeal would not come until December, 1933's 21st Amendment). 

The Brewery Workers had a policy of organizing local union by "departments" and not by employer - so, in Newark's case originally there were locals of brewers/brewhouse workers (No. 2), delivery/drivers (No. 148), bottlers (No. 268) and maltsters (No. 171) and, in 1933, soft drink workers (No.238).  Local 238, along with 7 other NJ BW locals would switch affiliations in July, 1942 to the AFL Teamsters, becoming IBT Local 125, still in existence.

In many cases, these new NJ Teamster locals of  brewery and soft drink workers would eventually expand their jurisdictions well beyond their original ones.  They would also frequently change, shorten or use different names for the locals, and the above history often uses these different names.