Coors strike and boycott

The boycott began in 1966 as a regional affair coordinated by the Colorado chapter of the American GI Forum and the Denver-based Crusade for Justice.

By the 1970s, the boycott covered much of Coors' market area and involved Hispanic, African American, and women's rights groups, as well as labor unions and LGBT activists.

The latter group opposed Coors' practice of using a polygraph test during their hiring process, which they alleged allowed them to discriminate against LGBT individuals.

In San Francisco, the city's LGBT community and the Teamsters union allied to promote the boycott that involved noted gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

Shortly after the strike started, the AFL-CIO (the United States' largest federation of labor unions) initiated a nationwide boycott of Coors.

The strike lasted for over 20 months, during which time a majority of the union members went back to work without a contract after the company began replacing strikers with strikebreakers.

In the LGBT community, the boycott left a lasting impact, as several groups and activists still object to Coors over the company's past actions and the family's continued support of conservative politics.

During the late 1960s to early 1970s, Joseph served as a member of the Regents of the University of Colorado, during which time he took a hardline stance against student activism.

However, his nomination was later killed by the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, which expressed concerns over potential conflicts of interest after it was revealed that he had donated money to the John Birch Society.

[8] In August 1970, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission found the company guilty of firing a worker due to his race.

During the strike and associated boycott, which had been organized by the United Farm Workers, the Coors family supported non-union grape growers, and the Crusade for Justice's newspaper El Gallo published images reportedly showing Coors trucks being used to transport grapes harvested by non-union farmers to markets.

[2] Representatives from the American GI Forum had several meetings with William Coors during this time to address the issues they were protesting, but the discussions proved fruitless.

[11] Questions asked during the testing covered topics including the use of marijuana, personal debts the individual owed, political affiliations of the application (specifically regarding "subversive, revolutionary or communist activities"),[4] and a question that read, "Is there anything in your personal life that might tend to discredit or embarrass this company if it were known?

[16] Around this time, president Allan Baird of Teamsters Local 921, which had organized Coors distribution workers in San Francisco, worked with activist Howard Wallace (an openly gay truck driver and Teamsters member[17]) to organize a large-scale boycott in the Bay Area,[18] leading to numerous gay bars refusing to carry Coors products.

[16] Milk also encouraged the Teamsters to hire openly gay people and to oppose the Briggs Amendment, a California ballot measure that would have banned LGBT teachers from employment.

[17] Activist Cleve Jones was also involved, and he later claimed that the Bay Area boycott was the first-ever instance of collaboration between labor unions and the gay rights movement.

[19] Activist Tami Gold later claimed that the boycott was "perhaps one of the first major public demonstrations of the links between class and sexual identity".

[6] A 1975 article in The New York Times described the unions at Coors as weak, highlighting several failed strikes that had occurred throughout the company's history.

[1] At the time, union members reported that working conditions were not ideal, with the most significant point of contention being the 21 causes for firing, which included doing anything "which would discourage any person from drinking Coors beer" and "making disparaging remarks about the employer".

[25] Shortly after the strike's start, Coors began pushing for the union shop rule at the brewery to be revoked, which was strongly opposed by the strikers.

In October 1987, the company signed a $325 million agreement with a coalition consisting of the NAACP and Operation PUSH, two African American activist organizations.

However, at the time, the non-AFL–CIO affiliated Teamsters were not part of the boycott, instead focusing on organizing the workers at a Coors brewery in Elkton, Virginia.

[15] In 1985, Pete Coors took over the company's day-to-day operations from his father Joseph and immediately began negotiating with the AFL–CIO on an agreement that would end the boycott.

The AFL–CIO rejected Coors' initial offer in February 1987, but on August 19, they announced that they had come to an agreement with the company and would end their boycott.

[33] Additionally, the AFL–CIO and the company claimed that the agreement would make it easier for worker organization efforts at Coors facilities,[32] However, any union vote would be overseen by a third party such as the American Arbitration Association rather than the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

[36][35] The strike and boycotts had a considerable impact on Coors, with Jonathan Tasini stating that they "effectively helped stunt the company's growth".

In a 1998 article from the alternative newspaper The Village Voice, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation was criticized for accepting a $110,000 donation from Coors, stating that, at the time, the boycott was still active in the LGBT community.

However, individuals within the community criticized the company's past and the Coors family's continued support for right-wing politics.

[39] In 2019, union and LGBT activist Nancy Wohlforth commented that "to this day, you can't find Coors in a gay bar in San Francisco",[17] a claim backed up by a 2017 article by the Teamsters on the impact of the boycott.

[18] A 2014 article published by Colorado Public Radio stated that "grudges against Coors continue" among groups that had been involved in the boycotts.