Limit on free beer at work prompts Carlsberg strike

Trade unions in Britain may have been flexing their muscles in recent weeks - Unite calling out BA cabin crews and the RMT trying but failing to organise industrial action at Network Rail - but even they will be astonished by the news of a strike in Denmark by Carlsberg brewery workers.

Hundreds have walked off the job after being told they can no longer have access to limitless free beers throughout the working day. Instead, they are restricted to drinking the company's product in their lunch hour in the canteen. The coolers dotted around the site, from which anyone could grab a lager when they felt like it, have been removed.

Eight hundred workers walked out on Wednesday, a further 250 downed bottle-openers on Thursday, and now the company's truck drivers have joined the strike in sympathy.

And yes, you guessed it, the truckers have always been entitled to free beers too! Indeed, because they are less likely to have time for lunch, they are actually exempt from the new rules and can take three bottles from the canteen to drink on the road.

The new limits were imposed on April 1, which might suggest that this is an April Fool. It isn't. Company spokesman Jens Bekke, confirming the strike, said Carlsberg had been considering stricter limits for some time and had only this month got around to introducing them.

He explained that workers were not allowed to be drunk at work - "it was up to each and everyone to be responsible" - and that all Carlsberg delivery trucks are fitted with ignition locks preventing personnel from driving while intoxicated.

There appears little chance of workers at Carlsberg’s plant at Northampton coming out in support of their Danish brothers. A spokesman told The First Post that the English brewery has always been dry and that the only perk – discounted lager at a social club - was brought to an end in the 1990s. ·