CAMBRIDGE — A plan to transition a popular brewery here to employee-ownership, designed to give employees more say and a share of profits, has been met with friction from the union representing those workers.
Lamplighter Brewing Co., which has two locations in Cambridge and also sells coffee and café fare, announced its plans on Tuesday to create an “employee ownership trust” that would own the company and run it for the benefit of employees. Workers would serve on its stewardship committee and guide decision-making and could participate in “profit-sharing,” according to the announcement.
“Employee ownership gives us a way to protect what people love about Lamplighter and Pepita [Coffee], while building a stronger and more inclusive future for the business,” Lamplighter cofounder Cayla Marvil said in a statement.
The owners said they aim to implement the plan this fall, and that it still needs approval from the city.
Some staff took the announcement as cheers-worthy news: Soon they’d be able to share in the company’s success directly. But to others, the picture seems a bit hazier.
The union that represents those employees, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1445, now says they weren’t consulted on the employee-ownership plans despite being in contract negotiations with the company’s owners for months.
Its lawyer, Alfred Gordon O’Connell, in a letter sent to owners on Tuesday, said moving forward with the plan would amount to “a clear and blatant violation” of federal labor law.
“While the Union has no desire to impede what will likely be a beneficial outcome for our members, we must insist that the Company satisfy its bargaining obligations first,” O’Connell wrote.
A Lamplighter spokesperson pushed back, saying negotiations don’t need to be completed before ownership changes, in a statement Wednesday. The company said the shift wouldn’t impact the union’s bargaining role or change unionized workers’ wages, hours, or working conditions.
“We understand that certain elements of the EOT will need to be negotiated with the Union, and we’ll do so in good faith,” Michelle Whipple, Lamplighter’s creative and brand director, said.
In one employee’s view, the plan seemed exciting.
“It definitely feels like we’ve got a little more agency,” said Devin Bailey, a production assistant at the brewery’s Broadway location. “It feels like we’re getting an extra oomph, you know — an extra incentive to just continue doing the good work that we do.”
Workers at the brewery’s two Cambridge locations narrowly voted to unionize early this year, securing representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1445 in March. Negotiations over the company’s first collective bargaining agreement remain ongoing.
The union has expressed frustration at the pace of those talks, including to the National Labor Relations Board.
O’Connell, in his letter, urged the owners to set new dates for negotiations on both the contract and the terms of the arrangement.
“Should the company fail or refuse to do so, the Union is prepared to file additional charges and to seek injunctive relief blocking the implementation of this transition,” he wrote.
Lamplighter would not be the first brewery in the Boston area to pursue some form of employee ownership. Democracy Brewing, a brewpub in Downtown Crossing, gives full-time workers an ownership share and vote on company operations. Harpoon Brewery, meanwhile, offers an Employee Stock Ownership Plan.
An employee ownership trust is less common, said Joseph Blasi, director emeritus of Rutgers University’s Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing. It is also relatively rare for companies to be both employee-owned and have workforces represented by a union, he said.
“The employee ownership trust is a very new development” within the United States, he said.
For their part, Lamplighter’s current owners said the effort to transition to employee ownership has been years in the making.
In an interview at their Cambridge Crossing taproom on Tuesday, Marvil said she and her business partner, AC Jones, began exploring the concept around 2022.
“It’s taken us multiple years to lay the groundwork to get there,” Marvil said. “We needed to lay out the trust, we needed to design all the elements, and so we reached that milestone a few weeks ago.”
Marvil said the new ownership structure would not disrupt union negotiations.
“We’ll still negotiate with the union over a contract, and it’s in no way intended to alter or change that relationship,” Marvil said.
Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell. Daniel Kool can be reached at daniel.kool@globe.com.