COMP NEWS – A popular bourbon maker recently handed out free whiskey and $4-and-hour pay raises to its staff.

The problem – a judge just ruled that the pay bumps were explicitly timed to illegally undermine an upcoming unionization vote.

Woodford Reserve undermined unionization efforts at its Kentucky distillery by awarding pay raises, relaxing its vacation policy and handing out bottles of whiskey to workers before a vote on whether to unionize, a federal judge ruled.

The sweeteners the prominent bourbon maker offered to workers were timed to influence the outcome of the unionization vote, Andrew S. Gollin, an administrative law judge with the National Labor Relations Board, wrote in his decision Monday.

The 2022 unionization effort failed, but Gollin set aside the election results and said Woodford Reserve and its parent company should recognize and bargain with a local Teamsters union. Woodford Reserve is part of spirits giant Brown-Forman Corp., based in Louisville, Kentucky.

“Overall, the timing and circumstances surrounding these actions are more than sufficient to infer unlawful motivation,” Gollin wrote in his decision.

Woodford Reserve said that its generous actions were undertaken to improve employee retention. The judge disagreed, claiming that pay raises and whiskey handouts were a direct attempt to influence an impending union vote.

The company said it took each of the actions in question for legitimate business reasons that were unrelated to the union campaign. But the judge disagreed, saying the company engaged in unfair labor practices in violation of the National Labor Relations Act. The company failed to prove that the pay raise, relaxed vacation policy and whiskey giveaway would have occurred in the absence of the union campaign, he said.

Brown-Forman said it is reviewing the ruling and determining its next steps. The judge’s order can be appealed to the NLRB. The decision also was significant because it was the second administrative law judge bargaining order since the NLRB set a new framework for union elections last year, said Kayla Blado, a spokeswoman for the board.

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