BF.A Brown Forman Corp

A strike at two Kentucky bourbon plants has entered its fifth day as talks between Beam Suntory Inc. and the local union continue amid rising pressure from the company's ambitious growth plan.

The strike by the United Food & Commercial Workers union began last week after 220 employees at plants in Boston, Ky., and Clermont, Ky., rejected new contracts because they didn't address workweeks that were routinely getting to be 60 to 90 hours long as the company tries to keep up with soaring thirst for bourbon.

"With the bourbon boom, everyone's having to work a whole lot more hours, but they're not willing to train more people or hire more people to help those of us working 60, 70, 80 hours a week," said Bill Ball, who has worked at the Clermont plant for 47 years and has been picketing outside the plant since the strike began Saturday.

Tammie Hellmueller, also on the picket line, said, "There are people that work seven days a week. People missed out on a lot, you know, family, soccer games."

Beam spokesman Clarkson Hine said accelerated demand for bourbon has created a lot more work within the company's distilleries. He added, "We greatly value our union team members, we share their concerns, and we are working hard to address them at the bargaining table."

The company and union met Tuesday with assistance from a federal labor mediator and those talks will continue Wednesday, Mr. Hine said. Meanwhile, Beam said it is using a contingency plan to keep its plants operating and doesn't anticipate product shortages.

The labor dispute comes about 2½ years after Japan-based Suntory Holdings Ltd. acquired the maker of the world's top-selling bourbon, Jim Beam, for $13.8 billion in a deal driven by surging bourbon sales. Bourbon sales grew 52% between 2010 and 2015, according to the Distilled Spirits Council.

Aiming to leverage Beam's big name brands like Maker's Mark and Knob Creek, Suntory set an ambitious goal of doubling global liquor sales by 2020 and has chipped away at it by boosting Jim Beam exports to Japan, where the brand's volumes rose 62% last year.

Workers say the company has been trying to meet the goals by hiring temporary workers and pushing staff at some facilities to work 60 to 90 hour weeks. Union employees estimate more than 100 temporary workers now help staff two facilities, working for an estimated $11 to $12 an hour—far less than the more than $20 union workers are paid plus benefits.

Employees who have gone on strike want Beam to hire more workers and reduce the number of temporary employees. They say adding staff will ease overtime demands that have soared over the past five years.

In addition to better hours, union workers opposed Beam's offer of a two-year contract rather than a five-year agreement and the ending of a seniority system that gives workers preferential shifts based on years of service. Instead, Beam wants to assign employees shifts as it sees fit, workers say.

Brown-Forman Corp., which makes Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey and Woodford Reserve bourbon, and Heaven Hill Distilleries, which makes Evan Williams bourbon, reached agreements with union employees on new labor contracts earlier this year.

A Brown-Forman spokesman said it has hired more workers and increased overtime to keep up with demand, while a Heaven Hill spokesman said it added a third shift and staff.

Beam's reliance on overtime and temporary workers comes as its faces more competition for workers. Roughly 15 employees, including a Maker's Mark master distiller and many union workers, left Beam in August for jobs with startup distiller Bardstown Bourbon Co., which is one of more than a 20 new distilleries that have announced operations in Kentucky.

"People are just leaving," Mr. Ball said. "They're fed up because they're not able to perform their work the way they ought to. It's hard to explain the way things are."

Write to Tripp Mickle at Tripp.Mickle@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 19, 2016 12:55 ET (16:55 GMT)

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