BreakThru Beverage Workers On Strike
“We're not [just] striking for pay or benefits. We're striking to maintain the right to strike,” a worker on the picket line stated.
Delivery drivers at Breakthru Beverage, a liquor distributor, in Cicero, IL. have been striking for weeks to maintain the right to honor picket lines of other facilities; contract language management has demanded that be removed.
At the same time, Breakthru workers have hit the picket lines across many states to show unity with their fellow workers in St. Louis who are currently seeking better wages amid the growing cost of living crisis. The expansion of solidarity strikes will ensure the company comes to the bargaining table in good faith and without unacceptable demands.
As a result, Breakthru Beverages has retaliated by threatening the workers, attempting to divide them by hiring scab labor at higher wages and by coercing workers to cross the picket. One worker on the picket noted that some of the scab laborers hired do not possess the licenses required to operate such vehicles and are working out of rented U-Haul trucks.
Breakthru Beverages is a large national liquor distributor boasting revenues of over $8 billion annually. The company is owned in part by the Wirtz family, the multi-billionaire family that owns the Chicago Blackhawks NHL hockey team. The other half is owned by the Charmer Sunbelt Group, which is controlled by the multi-billionaire Merinoff family.
Breakthru workers spend 8 to 10 hour days driving, often alone, between dozens of stops to deliver hundreds of cases of inventory. For hours on end drivers load and unload heavy cases from their trucks, then up and down stairs by hand aided only by a dolly. Hard work for a salary that has meant less and less.
The capitalists aim is to divide workers and by standing against the bosses' attacks, the workers reject these attempts to be isolated and allow the weakening of their union. The ultimate fight necessary is not between scabs and the workers on the picket, but between those who make everything and the owners who want to take everything.
In demanding that the workers give up their contract-protected fighting tool to honor solidarity pickets, the bosses are sending a clear signal that they mean to squeeze the workers for more. More hours, higher quotas, and lower pay. When union unity breaks, it would not be the Wirtz Family that loses a penny, but the workers who will lose one of their most important weapons.