Bitter Beercott

A dispute over privacy rights

Although Coors beer is sold almost exclusively in 14 Western states, it is the nation's fifth bestselling beer and has become something of a status symbol in the East. Presidents Eisenhower and Ford used to bring cases of Coors back to Washington aboard Air Force jets after transcontinental trips. Actor Paul Newman always drank Coors on movie sets when it was available.

But as a huge Coors advertising balloon floated aloft in the company's home state of Colorado last month, football fans booed in Denver's Mile High Stadium. Reason: for nearly nine months the Adolph Coors Co. brewery, the world's largest, has been the target of an unusual strike and boycott that are supported by a formidable, if somewhat incongruous alliance of activists that includes women's groups, Chicanos, homosexuals and civil libertarians. The issue is not wages but the right of privacy. In fact, the average salary at the company, which has been controlled for three generations by the wealthy Coors family of Golden, Colo., is a hefty $19,500 for a 42-hour week.

Coors workers began the strike in April, when the company, which has been a union shop for 42 years, sought to limit seniority rights and diminish the authority of Local 366 of the brewery workers union over its 1,472 members. But the union quickly turned the dispute into an ideological confrontation with Chairman William Coors, 61, and his brother Joseph, 60, a well-known backer of the John Birch Society and other right-wing causes. The union's allies are particularly upset by the firm's practice of using lie-detector tests to probe into the lives of job applicants, and claim that Coors discriminates against minorities.

In a series of affidavits collected by the union, striking employees charged that lie-detector tests used by the company to screen job applicants required them to answer such questions as: What are your sex preferences? How often do you change your underwear? Have you ever done anything with your wife that could be considered immoral? Are you a homosexual? Are you a Communist? The union maintains that these questions are invasions of privacy. Says Union Business Manager David Sickler: "When you get through being grilled on that lie detector, you feel dirty."

Coors executives say they did not know such questions were on the tests, which were prepared by outside polygraph companies and used before 1975. Since then, they say, Coors has not permitted any questions concerning sex in its polygraph exams. But the union now wants Coors to stop using the tests, which the firm refuses to do. William Coors argues that the tests help reveal "whether the applicant may be hiding some health problem" and ensure that "the applicant does not want the job for some subversive reason such as sabotaging our operation." There is some basis for the company's concern: last August a tipster directed police to a pipe bomb at a Coors recycling plant in a Denver suburb.

Because of widespread indignation over the tests among liberals, the strikers have many sympathizers. Gay rights groups say they have persuaded 100 bars in San Francisco to stop selling Coors. In Los Angeles, feminists have joined the boycott to protest the polygraph exams and Joseph Coors' backing of Phyllis Schlafly, the leader of the anti-Equal Rights Amendment forces. The Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women has asked ERA supporters to bring aluminum cans to a Coors recycling center and demand that the company pay for them with checks made out to the local pro-ERA campaign. Chicano boycotters accuse Coors of racial discrimination in hiring, a charge that the company denies.

Peter Coors, 31, the company's marketing vice president, concedes that the boycott has been painful: sales in California, which account for almost 45% of the company's volume, are down by 15%. A possible settlement is complicated by the company's demand that the union accept an open shop, which became a management goal after 53% of the strikers crossed picket lines and returned to work last spring. But Peter Coors thinks that Coors has weathered the worst. Says he: "If we've been hurt, then we've been hurt as much as we're going to be hurt."

Indeed, bartenders in the West are serving up plenty of Coors these days. Bellying against a bar in Los Angeles, Plumber Wallace Wirtzberger declared: "I could care less about the strike or boycott. I'm going to keep drinking Coors." Paul Newman, a frequent backer of liberal causes, disagrees. Says he: "All the good things about Coors are simply outweighed by the company's violations of people's privacy and rights." Newman now drinks Budweiser.

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