Distillery teams at the Macallan and Glenrothes, two Speyside makers owned by drinks group Edrington, will decide whether or not to go on strike after changes to their shifts were “imposed” on them without agreement.

According to union GMB Scotland, the changes at Edrington will see the distillery teams work more days and be on-call for longer, but for no extra pay.

Their existing four-day work pattern has been in place for two years, the union says. The new “hugely disruptive rotas” were brought in by a manager “only a few weeks after joining the company”.

The three-week ballot starts today, with Edrington urged to “restart talks with workers to find a fairer way forward”.

A spokesperson for Edrington said it was “disappointing” that after “months” of talking, “the GMB had chosen to ballot for industrial action”.

“These new working arrangements are essential in aligning the work of our engineering team with colleagues around the distillery and other sites,” they said. “We have made a number of concessions and compromises to ensure that the new arrangements provide our people with both flexibility and certainty about working patterns.

“We will continue to be open to discussion with our people and their representatives to reach a pragmatic solution.”

While there is no indication that production redundancies are on the cards, it’s important to consider the move as part of what’s going on more widely in Scotch. Many distilleries have scaled back production, and the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) calculates that more than 1,000 direct jobs have been lost since the last Budget.

It’s not clear whether the changes made at the Macallan and Glenrothes are due to a reduction in volumes. However, Edrington’s full-year sales to 31 March 2025 saw core revenues fall by 10 per cent to £912 million, with pre-tax profits falling 26 per cent.

There are many factors at play, and they are certainly not unique to Edrington. The SWA says 25 per cent of distillers anticipate job cuts as a result of increases in UK spirits duty. And of course, the introduction of US tariffs has had a heavy impact, too. Scotch has lost as much as £4m a week due to Donald Trump’s decision to implement them, the SWA reckons.

Many distillers are feeling the impact of it all. Just this week, Ian Macleod-owned Rosebank, which only reopened in March 2024, saw redundancies. Not just because of the “softening” market, as the distiller noted in a statement, but also because visitor numbers were lower than anticipated.

In April, Isle of Harris Distillery publicly expressed that it had made the “painful” decision to reduce the size of its team in an effort to secure its future. It pointed to a “storm of industry and economic challenges”. 

And in January Brown-Forman’s Glenglassaugh halted production and made workers redundant. The move was part of a restructuring process which meant one distillery team would be shared between Glenglassaugh and nearby Benriach. The parent company said that there would be “periods of production” alongside “occasional” silent seasons.

These are certainly not the only distilleries to have laid off staff. And it’s easy to see why the proposed changes at the Macallan and Glenrothes play into a wider sense of pessimism for the industry. But there is a more upbeat note to end on.

While 2024 exports — a useful indicator of the health of the sector — fell by 3.7 per cent year-on-year, according to SWA data, volumes actually increased by 3.9 per cent.

More people are drinking whisky out in the world than ever before. And the amount of Scotch whisky being shipped has increased. This is what you’d expect, as many of us experience a squeeze on disposable incomes. We collectively just have less money to spend on the non-essentials, including whisky. But if Scotch can weather the storm — and the history books show it’s been through worse — there’s a whole new demographic of whisky drinkers coming up that will enjoy whisky into the future.

Every job lost and every shift cut represents real hardship. And the hope is that distilleries (really, often the multinationals that own them) will do all they can to protect their teams. But there are green shoots. Those looking at the balance sheets would do well to remember those volume figures and think longer term.