minneapolis punks voted to unionize a merch warehouse. sony music plans to shut it down.

Cesar Esparza started working at Kings Road Merch over 12 years ago. This was well before the company was acquired by Sony Music—back when Esparza and the warehouse were both based in Los Angeles. “It was a place where punks got hired,” he tells me in the parking lot outside a punk show at a Minneapolis warehouse.

Culturally, it makes sense that punks were drawn to Kings Road. It was founded by Epitaph Records and Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewitz, and it serves as the merch partner for some of the biggest punk bands going: Rancid, Touché Amoré, Descendents, Circle Jerks, Converge, Dropkick Murphys, the Chats, Refused, and Propaghandi, to name a few.

When the Kings Road location in L.A. was shuttered about three years ago, Esparza was invested enough in the culture of his workplace to pack up his life and move his family to the Twin Cities rather than seek new employment. “There’s a certain pride that people take in working for Kings Road,” he said. “This sounds cheesy as fuck, but it's like a family.” Through this workplace, Esparza found a community—people who raised kids together and attended each other’s baby showers.

When he thinks about the friendships he formed over the years at Kings Road, the one that looms largest is his late friend Bhed. “Rest in peace, he was an amazing fuckin’ person. Everybody had a great relationship with him. He was my fuckin’ homie. I brought a picture of him and put it in the [Minneapolis] office 'cause I felt like he should be a part of this place. When he was here, it was really good for all of us. He deserves a place in this company.”

Workplaces can be complicated. “Personally, it feels like an abusive relationship,” Esparza said. Earlier this year, after discussing frustrations around pay and other issues, the workers voted unanimously to unionize earlier this year. Then, on the morning of June 23—hours before their first contract bargaining session—the union was informed by a lawyer representing Sony Music Entertainment of the company’s plan to shutter the warehouse in September.

“While Kings Road remains an important part of our direct-to-consumer offering, we are focusing on our core strength of partnering with clients to develop and execute effective merch strategies,” a statement attributed to Sony Music reads. “With respect to the Minneapolis warehouse closing, Sony Music is committed to negotiating a fair separation arrangement with the Teamsters union representing the warehouse workers in compliance with all labor laws.”

Kings Road Merch Union released a statement on June 25 with their response to their bosses. “Let us be clear: this is a unionbusting tactic being used by Kings Road Merch owner Sony Music Entertainment. This will not stand in Minneapolis. Not right now; not ever,” the statement reads. “We demand that Kings Road Merch reverse their decision to close warehouse operations in Minneapolis, meet with our union to bargain for a contract, and get back to the work of making kickass merch. Unionbusting is not Punk Rock. Kings Road Merch can do better.”

Greer is the frontperson and unhinged voice of the Minneapolis hardcore band BUIO OMEGA. While she was looking for work in 2025, Will (from scene comrades Shatter) suggested she apply to the warehouse. She got the job, and within three months of working there, Kings Road was acquired by Sony Music’s music distribution subsidiary the Orchard. At the start of 2026, Greer and Esparza were among the workers noticing issues beyond their control within the workplace.

“We were all kind of feeling like, ‘Damn, there’s some not-cool shit happening,’” Greer said. The biggest issue? “Pay,” they both said in unison. In addition to employees’ base pay being low, Esparza was shorted on paychecks after working overtime multiple weeks in a row following the change in management. “It just wasn't showing up until like a month later. I was consistently being told, ‘It’s getting fixed, it's getting fixed.’ And it wasn't. It was just like, What the fuck, dude? Why am I doing this? Why am I spending time away from my family?”

While Esparza said he and others consistently received backpay to address discrepancies, it didn’t help morale that overtime money was delayed in the middle of a workload increase. “We inherited an entire label during busy season,” Greer said. They also noted the warehouse’s reliance on temp employees, who were contracted to work 40-hour weeks without the same benefits full-time employees receive.

“The temps have way worse insurance,” Greer said. When one temp employee asked about a path to full-time employment in pursuit of better benefits, they were allegedly encouraged by someone in Sony’s PX department (their version of HR) to seek employment elsewhere if they were no longer satisfied by their situation. Just three weeks ago, when all full-time employees received raises and bonuses, temp workers did not.

As a punk rock workplace in a city with a strong DIY scene, where organization is crucial, it’s natural that the workers started to organize. “We started meeting up and talking about it, bringing more people into the fold, moving in secret.”

They organized with Teamsters Local 970, and in April, they went public as the Kings Road Merch Union. During this stage of unionizing, management at Sony Music had the opportunity to voluntarily recognize the union. “Naively, I thought they would,” Esparza said. “There’s other people who’ve been there over a decade besides me who’ve put in so many thousands of hours of our labor. Come Christmas time, we have to work mandatory overtime. We have families. I thought they’d recognize us out of respect for all that, but they didn’t. I was like, Man, fuck these fools!”

A union election (the alternate path to recognition) was scheduled. In a famously pro-labor city, Kings Road management regularly distributed literature around the workplace underlining the cost of union dues and the downfalls of organizing through the Teamsters. One handout titled “before you vote in the union election…Know the FACTS” made it known how management felt about the unionizing process:

Your vote for the union DOES NOT mean: The Teamsters will deliver on any of its "promises." Despite what they promise, the law does not require the union keep its "promises," and the Teamsters cannot guarantee that they can deliver on any promise for improvement it made during the organizing drive.

“One of them was a big list of all the benefits, all the kind of nice things that we get, and it’s like, OK, slightly less than a quarter of the workforce [the temporary workers] can’t access those. And even with the nice benefits, I still am afraid to go to the doctor because I’m still getting paid so shit that even though we have ‘nice insurance,’ it’s still gonna cost me an arm and a leg.”

Esparza also pointed out the “self-own” within management’s argument: “In two of the leaflets, they keep being like, ‘If you make $17.60 an hour, the Teamsters are gonna take a portion of your wage in dues.’ We’re like, Dudes, why do you keep posting this shit wage? This shit sucks!” Chad Reichow, their representative from Teamsters Local 970, claimed that workers at similar distribution facilities in Minneapolis are paid “much more.”

For union recognition, just over half of eligible workers had to vote in favor. On May 11, workers unanimously voted for unionization. Now, just over a month later, their fight for a contract faces a significant obstacle with Sony Music’s stated intention to shutter the Minneapolis warehouse. 

Reichow said a lawyer representing Sony Music had previously floated the possibility of shutting down their Minneapolis location in the weeks surrounding the union election. “They told me there was a possibility of shutting down, they hadn’t made their decision yet. They said something along the lines of, ‘We don’t know how much money and resources you want to invest into something that’s not going to last.’”

A closure was never formally or officially stated until Reichow was contacted by Sony Music’s legal representative on Tuesday morning. Kings Road Merch Union has full-on characterized Sony Music’s announcement as unionbusting. When asked if he agrees, Reichow replied, “I think it’s snakey as shit. It doesn’t pass the smell test.”

The union faces new questions about the company’s future and the possibility of workforce reductions. Regardless of what happens next, they’ve made it clear that they’re still fighting. Reichow added: “They’re not closed until they close, so we’re going to keep moving forward with the process.”

“When Sony took over, they broke everything,” Esparza said. “The workers at Kings Road made sure that the warehouse functioned amongst the chaos that Sony Music created. If we don’t want this warehouse shut down, we need to fight for that.”

Aside from the on record statement, Sony Music offered no additional comment.

Work in the warehouse can be monotonous, and it’s certainly not as glamorous as designing your own band’s merch. “It’s a lot of taking T-shirts out of one box and putting T-shirts in another box,” Greer said. Ultimately though, it’s a rare music industry position in an even rarer punk-coded workplace. Greer is a student of punk shirts throughout the genre’s illustrious history, which attracted her to this job to begin with. 

“I was excited to work for a merch company, but I do feel like because of the cool punk veneer, it can take you in and exploit you. The company’s like, ‘You get to ship out L7’s merch, you love L7!’ And I get to send packages to L7, that’s tight! But man, dude, I’m still not getting paid a living wage.”

One of Kings Road Merch’s biggest clients is Dropkick Murphys, who performed a national Teamsters event in Las Vegas just this month. Greer didn’t love interfacing with KRM’s merch designs for the band in the context of the workers’ day-to-day reality. “I was just like, Damn, we’re sitting here folding these Union Strong, For the People shirts and we don’t have a fucking union. It was very demoralizing, folding those knowing that we didn't get paid our full hours today.”

In an Instagram comment responding to this story, Dropkick Murphys voiced their support for the union: “We stand with you all. Thank you for all you’ve done for us all these years.”

The union hopes that artists and their fans can lend their support in the face of a potential shutdown. see/saw reached out to multiple bands whose merchandise is designed, printed, and shipped by Kings Road Merch for comment about Sony Music’s announcement on the union’s first day of bargaining. At publication time, those artists have either declined to comment or have yet to respond. The Casualties are among the artists on the Kings Road Merch roster; guitarist Jake Kolatis shared the union’s statement on his Instagram stories with this note: “Worth the read.”

This story has been updated to reflect Dropkick Murphys’ statement in support of the union.