By Riley McCoy
For The Register-Herald
Beckley — In its 10th week, a beer delivery driver union strike entered into federal mediation without its owners and continues without an agreement.
The mediation marked the first federal intervention in the dispute since Teamsters Local 175 union employees walked off the job May 12 over proposed changes to health insurance, spouse coverage and retirement benefits.
The Washington, D.C.-based Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, an independent federal agency that assists unions and employers in resolving labor disputes, provided the mediator.
However, the agency lacks the authority to force either party to accept an agreement.
Farley said the mediator separated the parties and explored possible compromises during an eight-hour session that ran from about 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Beverage Market owners Theresa Hammonds-Johnson and Luther Martin Johnson, from Kentucky, did not participate in the session for reasons that remain unclear.
Despite that setback, Luke Farley, in-house counsel for Teamsters Local 175, said the company still has more than 100 contract proposals open compared to just a few from the union’s side.
“It is obvious to anyone paying attention or involved in this process,” Farley said. “The company has zero intentions of reaching an agreement.”
He added that the failed mediation reinforced the union’s belief that the company is more interested in prolonging the strike than reaching a contract.
“With the money that the owners have spent on the scabs and the security and opening up a second warehouse in Beckley,” Farley said. “They could have settled this contract.”
He also pointed to the owners’ continued absence from negotiations, including the federal mediation session, as another indication that the company was not seriously pursuing an agreement but instead trying to break the union itself.
“They’re paying attorneys for negotiations, and they don’t even show up for it,” Farley said. “Those are indications.”
Farley said union members have also been told by company employees that ownership intends to break the union, though that claim has not been independently confirmed.
“We have company employees who have told us that she [Theresa Hammonds-Johnson] went around making statements that she’s gonna bust the union,” Farley said. “She’s telling them, and they talk to us. Her people talk to us.”
Some non-union office employees have worked alongside the striking employees for years, Farley said, allowing relationships and communication to continue despite the walkout.
On the picket line, Teamsters Local 175 Vice President Donnie Perdue said workers continue following delivery trucks and protesting outside stores that acccept Beverage Market products.
“We don’t cause a ruckus,” Perdue said. “We gather our things and go to the street corner, wherever we can off the property, and continue our protest.”
He appealed for broader support for the nearly 50 workers who have remained off the job since May 12.
“That’s one thing about West Virginians, we always got each other’s back,” Perdue said. “These guys at The Beverage Market need West Virginia’s support.”
Farley said readers can support the strike by avoiding products distributed by The Beverage Market, particularly Miller, Coors, Modelo and Corona, until an agreement is reached.
He later called on residents to contact Miller and its corporate offices and ask why the manufacturer has not intervened with one of its exclusive West Virginia distributors.
“Ask them why they’re letting a distributor hurt these employees in West Virginia,” Farley said. “Why are they letting them ruin their brand, affect their market share and destroy these employees in West Virginia?” Why don’t they step in and do something about this?”
The strike is expected to receive broader organized-labor support Monday when the West Virginia American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations hosts a “lunch at the line” with workers and members of the public.
“We’re trying to get all the public to come out and show support,” Perdue said.
The event is scheduled Monday, July 27 from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. next to The Beverage Market company headquarters in Sissonville.
Read more from The Register-Herald, here.
