The Workers Beer Company (WBC) is a trading arm of the
Battersea and Wandsworth Trade Union Council (BWTUC) and is a British-Irish business that provides mass catering to
bar
Bar or BAR may refer to:
Food and drink
* Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages
* Candy bar
* Chocolate bar
Science and technology
* Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment
* Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud
* Bar (u ...
s at
music festival
A music festival is a community event with performances of singing and instrument playing that is often presented with a theme such as musical genre (e.g., rock, blues, folk, jazz, classical music), nationality, locality of musicians, or h ...
s in the
UK and
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
. The WBC was set up by and is owned by the BWTUC.
WBC bars are staffed by volunteers and the money they earn is paid directly to the Labour Movement Organisations that send them along and vouch for and take responsibility for their honesty and reliability. The most notable festivals that WBC have worked at include
Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival (formally Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts and known colloquially as Glasto) is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place in Pilton, Somerset, England. In addition to contemp ...
,
Reading and Leeds Festivals
The Reading and Leeds Festivals are a pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in England. The events take place simultaneously on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend. The Reading Festiv ...
,
Latitude Festival
The Latitude Festival is an annual music festival that takes place in Henham Park, near Southwold, Suffolk, England. It was first held in July 2006 and has been held every year since, apart from 2020, when it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 ...
,
Tolpuddle Festival,
Homelands Homelands may refer to:
* Homeland, native lands
* Homelands (festival), British dance music festival.
* Homelands (Fables), mythical lands in the comic book series Fables.
* Homelands (Magic: The Gathering), MTG expansion set.
* Bantustan, part ...
,
Festival Internacional de Benicàssim
The Festival Internacional de Benicàssim (), commonly abbreviated to simply FIB, is an annual music festival that takes place in the town of Benicàssim, in the Valencian Community, Spain. It focuses mainly on pop, rock and electronica arti ...
and
Womad
WOMAD ( ; World of Music, Arts and Dance) is an international arts festival. The central aim of WOMAD is to celebrate the world's many forms of music, arts and dance.
History
WOMAD was founded in 1980 by English rock musician Peter Gabriel, ...
, as well as smaller concerts and meetings. In 2013 WBC expanded its business into Ireland working for MCD and Festival Republic at
Slane
Slane () is a village in County Meath, in Ireland. The village stands on a steep hillside on the left bank of the River Boyne at the intersection of the N2 (Dublin to Monaghan road) and the N51 (Drogheda to Navan road). As of the 2016 census ...
,
Longitude
Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east–west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek letter l ...
,
Phoenix Park
The Phoenix Park ( ga, Páirc an Fhionnuisce) is a large urban park in Dublin, Ireland, lying west of the city centre, north of the River Liffey. Its perimeter wall encloses of recreational space. It includes large areas of grassland and tre ...
, and in recent times provided Information Stewards at
Oxegen
Oxegen was a music festival in Ireland, first held from 2004–2011 as a rock and pop festival and again in 2013 with dance and chart acts only. The event was regularly cited as Ireland's biggest music festival, and, by 2009, it was being ci ...
as well as cup recycling.
The company also runs a permanent
public house
A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...
, the Bread and Roses, in
Clapham
Clapham () is a suburb in south west London, England, lying mostly within the London Borough of Lambeth, but with some areas (most notably Clapham Common) extending into the neighbouring London Borough of Wandsworth.
History
Early history
T ...
, London.
WBC and the trade union GMB set up an ethical clothing company called
Ethical Threads that provides mainly promotional T-shirts and sweatshirts, which is now a sponsor of the football club
Reading Town F.C.
In June 2018, Festival Republic organised three day events at Finsbury Park with bars managed by the Workers Beer Company. However they faced a massive Twitter backlash after fans complained about having to queue for up to two hours to get a drink in soaring temperatures. Queues plagued most of the event leading some fans to leave the early. The Company later issued an apology blaming an "unprecedented failure of up to 40% of staff to turn up
ref>{{Cite news, url=http://www.completemusicupdate.com/article/workers-beer-company-apologises-after-complaints-over-queues-at-festival-republic-shows-in-finsbury-park/, title=Workers Beer Company apologises after complaints over queues at Festival Republic shows in Finsbury Park, last=Cooke, first=Chris, date=2018-07-02, work=Complete Music Update, access-date=2018-10-02
External links
Workers Beer CompanyWorkers Beer Company ScotlandWorkers Beer Company GermanyBread and Roses pub
References
Beer organizations
Glastonbury Festival
Beer in the United Kingdom
British food and drink organisations