The persistent sales free fall of Bud Light is now leading to layoffs for hundreds of Americans who have fallen victim to production cuts at some of the key partners for parent company Anheuser Busch.<\/p>\n
On Sunday\u00a0Fox News<\/a>\u00a0reported that The Ardagh Group, a glass bottle maker with plants in North Carolina and Louisiana, will be closing both plants later this month. About 645 employees will lose their livelihoods as a result.\u00a0Local news station\u00a0WRAL<\/a>\u00a0uncovered that the decision to nix so many employees was tied to \u201cthe Bud Light situation,\u201d according to a machinist with one of the plants.<\/strong><\/p>\n From WRAL:<\/p>\n In a statement last Thursday, the company told the Ruston leader in Lousiana that the Wilson plant is closing, along with the Ruston plant, which employs 245 people. The statement doesn\u2019t identify a specific reason for the closures, only calling them part of a \u201cMulti-year Performance Optimization Program.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cSince April, we\u2019ve had a couple of machines down,\u201d said James Munhall, Journeyman Machine Repair Mechanic. \u201cIt was, of course, being pointed towards the Bud Light situation.\u201d<\/p>\n WRAL News obtained an internal memo from the Wilson plant manager dated May 18. it says, \u201cDue to slow sales with Anheuser Inbev,\u201d two of the factory\u2019s production lines would be shutting down. Multiple longtime employees at the Wilson plant say most of their business was making bottles for Budweiser and bud light.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Representatives with the plant have publicly attributed the closures with falling beer sales generally, saying on its fourth-quarter earnings call that North America saw a nine percent decline in need for its glass bottles. Unions for the laid off workers are continuing to negotiate for severance packages, but that doesn\u2019t solve the long-term problems now facing these Americans who relied on good-paying production jobs in rural parts of the country.<\/p>\n Since March,\u00a0Bud Light<\/a>\u00a0has been in the crosshairs of conservative activists after the brand partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote its product across social media. The swift backlash led celebrities like\u00a0Kid Rock<\/a>\u00a0and country singers to publicly destroy cases of Bud Light, leading the brand to offer\u00a0camo-printed cans<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0free or nearly-free beer<\/a>\u00a0through various coupon deals. The Bud Light executive behind the ad campaign was recently\u00a0fired<\/a>, and top politicians including\u00a0President Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0and U.S.\u00a0Senator Ted Cruz<\/a>\u00a0have danced on the beer\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The persistent sales free fall of Bud Light is now leading to layoffs for hundreds of Americans who have fallen victim to production cuts at some of the key partners for parent company Anheuser Busch. On Sunday\u00a0Fox News\u00a0reported that The Ardagh Group, a glass bottle maker with plants in North Carolina and Louisiana, will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-daily-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3099"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3101,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3099\/revisions\/3101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}