The Coors Boycotts 1960s-1980s
Beginning of the Boycotts
In 1966, two years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, Coors was still holding strong on its discriminatory hiring stance as they would not hire African Americans, Chicanos, LGBT people, and women among other minorities. Each time Coors would supply absurd demands of unreasonable tests such as polygraph tests, and high-level literacy tests which they did not force white male candidates for the job to take. Even when Coors did hire Chicanos or African Americans they would usually be forced to take labor-intensive jobs rather than any management positions and would only make up a small fractional percentage of the total workforce. Coors would continue with this practice even looking for excuses to fire minorities just because of their race. This combined with a very strong anti-union sentiment developing at the hire ups with Coors meant that it was only a matter of time before a conflict arose. This was all building tension and finally, many minority employees backed by the Local 366 Union went on strike against Coor's continued discrimination.