D.J. Edwards comes home smelling like beer every morning. He works from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. as a filler operator at Anheuser-Buschs brewery in Jacksonville, Florida, running a huge machine that fills 165 12-ounce cans every time it rotates. He takes a lot of pride in the job and says hes willing to strike to make sure the company takes care of its workers.

Were really fighting for job security, Edwards said. We need to know theyre committed to keeping breweries open and keeping us employed.

The union contract covering 5,000 Anheuser-Busch brewery employees expires Feb. 29. The Teamsters union says it made some progress on negotiating a new five-year agreement until talks stopped abruptly in mid-November. The two sides havent met since then and remain apart on key issues like pay increases, pension contributions and guarantees on jobs, according to the union.

In a sign of the high expectations for a strong contract, workers recently voted 99% in favor of authorizing the Teamsters to call a strike if they dont reach a deal by the end of next month.

That means Anheuser-Busch could see the most high-profile work stoppage of the new year, hitting a dozen breweries in 11 states and shutting the taps for Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra and Stella Artois, among other big-name macrobrews owned by Belgian parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Having watched other workers walk off the job amid a surge of U.S. labor activism, employees like Edwards believe now is the time to demand more from the storied brew-maker.

We feel like at this rate the momentum is swinging in our direction, said Edwards, a 37-year-old new father who has been at Anheuser-Busch since 2019. Its time to take care of the worker.

Its certainly a favorable moment to be hitting the picket lines.

Bolstered by a tight labor market and inspired by other contract fights, union workers have been walking off the job in numbers not seen since the wave of red-state teacher strikes that began in 2018. Writers, actors, autoworkers, nurses and baristas were all among the more than 400,000 workers who made 2023 a banner year for striking, and helped put corporate executives and board members on their heels.