Through Foam

COORS BEER has kicked off an extremely agressive advertising campaign throughout the Boston area. The company has sponsored rock concerts, sports pages in the Boston Herald and parties at the Metro. What Coors has not advertised is a record of discriminatory hiring practices, abusive treatment of employees, hazardous waste dumping and even outright racism that makes it one of the most dispicable companies in the country. Coors' activities have prompted a boycott by many labor, minority, environmentalist, and women's groups nationwide. That boycott deserves the support of the Harvard community.

The Coors boycott was begun in 1977 after the Adolph Coors Brewery Company refused to bargain with its workers over issues such as forced lie detector tests, compulsory physical examinations and search and seizure of employees' private property by Coors's private police force. Coors has been cited by the National Labor Relations Board for a number of instances of illegal harrassment of employees and continues to harrass and dismiss employees who support unionization. The company has broken 19 unions in the last 20 years. In addition Coors has been implicated in hazardous waste dumping and in unfair employment practices.

Until a 1975 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suit, Coors employees included only 7 percent women, 6 percent Chicanos and three percent Blacks. Female and elderly workers have charged their employer harassment, discrimination, and attempts to drive them out of the company by giving them particularly strenuous tasks and schedules. Unfair demands included requiring them to work back-to-back shifts, graveyard shifts and in some instances 14 days out of 15.

Coors's racism and anti-progressive activities do not stop at the company gates. Coors chairman and chief executive officer William Coors has suggested that Blacks have demonstrated "a lack of intellectual capacity." Coors president Joseph Coors has helped establish and continues to support and fund a variety of ultra right-wing organizations including, among others, the John Birch Society. He has supported the Reagan administration's anti-environment policies. He has funded the Heritage Foundation, which has opposed student aid programs, social security, and many other social programs. Coors also opposed the distribution of family planning information at the University of Colorado while he was one of its regents.

The profits from every can of beer the company sells inevitably contribute to these activities. However, boycotting Coors is not just a question of politics; it is a question of whether or not to contribute to the company's continued affronts to the human dignity of its workers.

Coors's sales have declined every year since the boycott began in 1977. Before the boycott, Coors had only one brand of beer. Now it has five--Coors, Coors Light, Herman Joseph 1868, Golden Lager, and Killian's Irish Red. In 1977 Coors sold 14 million barrels of beer in 11 states. In 1984 Coors sold only 13.2 million barrels in 37 states and the District of Columbia. Meanwhile the company's advertising budget has increased by a factor of almost 20. Coors is vulnerable. By joining the boycott now students and others can help keep the pressure on and force the Coors Brewery Company to clean up its act.

Boycotting Coors does not stop with refusing to buy Coors beer. It means asking stores and restaurants frequent not to carry it. It means asking liquor stores which only stock one brand of keg beer, often Coors, to sell other brands. It means not being fooled by flashy ads and new brand names. Don't buy Coors products until the people that make them are allowed a decent environment in which to make a living. It is time to see through the foam and take the head of Coors.