In 1977, 849 decertification elections were held, and unions lost 645. In 1967 the National Labor Relations Board conducted 234 decertification elections. But the workers' vote here to kick out the union reflects an increase in union decertification votes across the country in recent years. The Coors union fight has attracted an unusual amount of attention because of the boycott, the company's controversial use of lie detectors in screening new employes, and the Coors brothers' outspoken political conservatism.
The local lives off donations from other unions as it continues the boycott and contemplates its future.Ĭoors officials speak of the union in the past tense and vow to outlast the boycott, although they concede it has contributed to the company's drop in barrel-volume sales, which are down about one million from 13.5 million barrels in 1976, reversing a normal 10 percent annual sales gain.
Silverthorn, whose union is now bereft of dues-paying members. "I think we'll be back," perhaps with the backing of a large international union, says Local 366 President James B.
Now a third generation of Coors, brothers Joseph and William, have defied the labor movement in winning a decertification election last month to oust the brewery workers union that their father had welcomed.Ī union-led boycott of Coors, the nation's fifth largest supplier of beer, continues despite a sales market limited largely to Western states.īut the only visible reminder of the 20-month strike that toppled Brewery Workers Local 366, an independent affiliate of the AFL-CIO, are a couple of leftover picket signs propped up outside the main gate of the massive gray concrete beer-making complex, reputed to be the world's largest brewery. Forty-five years ago Adolph Coors Jr., catering to the post-Prohibition thirst of union members, invited a union to organize workers at the brewery founded by his immigrant father during the 1870s in the Rocky Mountain foothills west of Denver.
0 kommentar(er)
