Always come out swinging on booze's bad bosses

Editor’s note: In lieu of the standard Weekender, I’ve got a special Labor Day Weekend edition below. Normal publishing resumes next week. Hope you’re able to relax a bit this holiday.—Dave.

Things are not, like, “going great” for the American worker lately. Perhaps you’ve noticed. Or perhaps you haven’t, because after kinda-sorta making an effort to hire a more labor reporters last decade, corporate media has mostly reversed course, leaving the stories of the hundreds of millions of workers across the country to be told by fewer journalists to smaller audiences by perennially underfunded progressive newsmagazines and niche digital publications… if at all.

For the past five years, Fingers has proudly told as many of those stories as possible. As has become a Labor Day boozeletter tradition, I’ve included below a selection of worker-focused coverage about drinking in America from the archives.

It is this boozeletter’s guiding editorial opinion that while drinking is a unique—and, frankly, delightful—cultural institution, the drinks industry is the same as any other, and must be scrutinized as such. How do you cover a wealthy, well-organized, deeply connected concentration of capital that would much rather pitch its new wine-based riot punches and new-old vodka sexbots than its campaign donations, social costs, and bizarre fuck-ups? In 15 years on the beat, I have learned that listening to the workers that power the business—bartenders, delivery drivers, marketing peons, and everybody in between—is always a good place to start.

I’m grateful to all the workers that have trusted me with their stories, and I will continue to publish them for as long as I can afford to. Fingers is 100% reader-supported, and I’m determined to keep it that way to protect my editorial independence from industry influence. After all, it’s hard to give workers a fair shake when their bosses at the distillery (or the distributorship, or the sports-bar chain) are cutting you checks. At larger publications, these functions are at least nominally separate, but Fingers is a one-man operation. I’d rather grow it one subscription at a time and be able to come out swinging in every edition than sell ads to brands and obligate myself to become even the least bit sensitive to the industry’s messaging priorities about, say, labor relations. (Or drunk driving. Or c-suite cowardice. Or whatever.) So for the past five years, that’s what I’ve done.

Thanks to all the paying Friends of Fingers that have made this work possible for the past half-decade. I literally couldn’t do it without you. If you haven’t ponied up yet, I hope you’ll consider it. If you upgrade before the end of Labor Day—i.e., tomorrow at 11:59pm—you can score a sweet discount on your first year, plus a limited-edition “Drink The Rich” decal:

And of course, if you’re feeling flush (iN tHiS eCoNoMy?!) there’s always the Fingers Founding Membership, which comes with an exclusive holographic “Founder” sticker, a one-on-one Zoom hangout, and my eternal gratitude.

Thanks as ever for reading, Fingers Fam. Up the drinks, up the workers. Happy Labor Day.

✊ Some labor coverage from the archives