No more free beer for Labatt retirees
The free beer allotment for Labatt brewery retirees, which has been part of the workers' pension benefit package for more than five decades, will be scrapped. Labatt announced on 28 October 2016 that the perk will be phased out by 1 January 2019 because it’s too expensive. But workers call the cut petty when compared to the company’s rising revenues, Canadian media reported.
Labatt, which is owned by AB-InBev, said the allotment for existing retirees would be cut in half in 2018 and cut off completely in 2019.
As part of the local union contract in Edmonton, each current employee gets a Labatt gift card loaded with the equivalent cost of 52 cases of 12 beers (one case per week). On retirement, that allotment continued for life. After a Labatt pensioner died, their spouse was then entitled to the same yearly free beer card.
The statement did not make clear how much money cutting the retirees' beer allotment will save the company, which has 3,000 employees across the country.
But when rival brewer Molson made a similar cut in 2009 and stopped beer allotments to 2,400 retirees, the company estimated it would save just over CAD 1 million (USD 950,000) a year.
Most likely, Labatt’s savings will be higher than Molson’s. In any case, they should contribute to the cost savings of USD 1.4 billion AB-InBev is to squeeze from its business after the SABMiller takeover.
