'It was a nasty dispute': Remembering the B.C. beer lockout of 1978
Former union executive Rick Sutherland looks back at 17-week lockout
Beer taps running dry of Canadian beer and Metro Vancouverites streaming across the border to buy Budweiser: such was the B.C. beer lockout of 1978.
"The consumers were quite upset, let's put it that way," said Rick Sutherland, a former executive with the local chapter of the Brewery Winery and Distillery Workers Union.
"It was a nasty dispute."
Forty years ago this month, hundreds of B.C. beer workers were locked out by the major three breweries at the time: Labatt, Molson and Carling O'Keefe.
Sutherland worked for Labatt. He says the lockout lasted 17 weeks — but given the prominence of craft beer today, he doesn't think the same would happen now.
The lockout began when the three breweries decided to negotiate jointly with the union, Sutherland says. Prior to that, the union negotiated with each brewery individually.
Each of the three breweries had about 500 employees, according to Sutherland. They were all locked out when negotiations went south.
"Within a week to 10 days, everything was dry," Sutherland said of the taps at local hotels and pubs.
Soon, the liquor distribution branch began importing American bottled beer. And people in the Lower Mainland began streaming across the border to do the same.
Here is a video from the end of that year that wraps up CBC's coverage at the time:
'People were upset with us'
Consumers were not impressed.
Sutherland says that the union fought hard to try to explain that the labour dispute was a lockout, not a strike — the employees weren't picketing by choice.
But beer drinkers didn't care. Sutherland says they threw American beer bottles out the window as they drove past picketing employees.
"People were upset with us," he said.
When the 17-week dispute ended, the employees were left with a $0.05 increase in hourly wages from their previous bargaining position.
Sutherland says another lockout took place in 1980. The breweries' joint negotiating committee eventually disbanded.
Today, of the three major breweries, only Molson remains in the Lower Mainland.
Its plant on Vancouver's Burrard Street is moving to Chilliwack, with a fraction of the employees it had during the company's heyday in the late '70s.
Sutherland doesn't think a similar strike would happen today. Besides the far fewer employees, he says, the craft beer market offers consumers far more options.
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