Will Lakefront Brewery Go Union?

Lakefront Brewery. Photo by Annie Mattea.

In December 2024, employees of Lakefront Brewery narrowly voted in favor of union representation.

But once all the votes were tallied, that wasn’t the end of it. Both sides of the contest are now challenging ballots and the results of these challenges will determine whether or not Lakefront Brewery goes union.

In October last year, Lakefront employees went to brewery management demanding recognition of a union representing servers, line cooks, dishwashers, tour guides and hosts. A majority of workers in the proposed bargaining unit (approximately 72 staff) had signed union authorization cards naming the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization (MASH) as their bargaining representative.

Lakefront opted to petition the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for an election. MASH President Peter Rickman was critical of the company’s refusal to recognize the union. “Simply moving into the NLRB mechanism here is opposing unionization, because it’s saying, ‘Well, we actually don’t think that workers have made a choice here,’” he said at the time.

Once the ballots were tallied, there were 33 votes in favor of the union and 31 votes against, according to NLRB records. There were also six ballot challenges.

Lakefront Brewery President Russ Klisch declined to comment on the election or challenges.

One issue is whether three of the employees qualified as regular part-time employees.

“We think that one of them, who is a union supporter is eligible,” Rickman said. “And then the other two, about whose vote I’m not going to speculate here on the record, we believe are probably not eligible, which is the position of the employer as well. So we are agreeing on those.”

Another issue involves three employees that Lakefront says should be included in the bargaining unit, while MASH contends these positions are supervisory and should not be in the bargaining unit. They were allowed to vote under an election agreement between the two parties, with the caveat that their votes would be subject to a potential challenge.

Rickman charges that the election process was less democratic than a simple card-check. Not every union supporter was scheduled to work, or even in town on the day of the election and there’s no absentee ballot, Rickman said.

“Not every union supporter was able to vote that day, but employees voted union, yet,” Rickman said.

First the NLRB will need to rule on the ballot challenges. Depending on the outcome, the NLRB will next take up an objection to the entire election filed by MASH. The objection is based on alleged unfair labor practices during the course of the unionization campaign.

“I don’t want this kind of thing to just be about the legal, bureaucratic, administrative processes,” Rickman said. “It should really be about Employee Free Choice. When workers want a unit, they should have their employer recognize it and bargain.”

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