Bradley Cancels Appearance to Avoid Protest Over Coors

Mayor Tom Bradley has canceled a scheduled appearance at tonight’s fund-raising dinner for the Latin Business Assn. because of the AFL-CIO’s plans to picket the event, which is being sponsored by the Adolph Coors Brewing Co.

Bradley was to be the guest of honor at the annual awards dinner but withdrew last week, when he learned that Coors had underwritten the event.

“The mayor decided to honor the labor position and withdraw from the invitation,” Deputy Mayor Grace Davis explained.

Coors has been boycotted by the AFL-CIO since 1977, because of the company’s alleged anti-union activities. Bradley has long been considered a friend of organized labor and is expected to count on labor unions for support in this year’s mayoral election.

An official of the business owners’ group accused the mayor Tuesday of letting labor force him to turn his back on the city’s Latino community.

“Does the mayor run this town or does the union run the town?” asked the group’s communications director, George Romero.

By not attending, Romero said the mayor is also snubbing a delegation of Chinese business owners who are touring Los Angeles at the invitation of the Latin Business Assn. Davis said, however, that the mayor will try to arrange a City Hall ceremony to welcome the delegation later this month.

The dispute revives a controversy in the Latino community over how Coors should be viewed by Latinos. The Colorado-based brewery signed a nationwide pact in October with six Latino groups--including the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, to which the Latin Business Assn. belongs--calling for Coors to increase its investments in the Latino community over the next five years in proportion to the amount of Coors beer Latinos buy.

The agreement was heavily criticized by many Latino groups, which questioned Coors’ motives in signing the pact and claimed that the six groups that negotiated the agreement are not representative of the Latino community. They pledged to continue boycotting Coors over company policies that they say harm minorities and workers.

Coors spokesman Ron Kirkpatrick said Coors contributed $15,000 to pay for the Latino Business Assn. dinner and another $5,000 for the group’s scholarship fund. Coors has been active with the group for the past three years, serves on its board of directors and has contributed several thousand dollars to fund group projects, he said.

This is the first time the group has received such a large contribution from a corporation, and Romero fears the picketing will hurt the group’s efforts to continue to attract corporate support.

“It has nothing to do with whether we think they’re right in their fight against Coors. Coors is big enough to fight their own battles,” Romero said.

“We want to see that Hispanic people don’t get stepped on. In this situation, what they’ve done is beat up a newspaper boy for carrying the paper that brings the news that you don’t want to hear.”

No Intent

However, AFL-CIO officials say they have no intent of harming the Latin Business Assn. or interfering with tonight’s dinner.

“Our dispute is not with them, it’s with the company that’s sponsoring the dinner,” said David Sickler, national coordinator for the labor group’s Coors boycott.

“We don’t want to discourage anybody from going. We want people to go, but we want the public to know that all is not well with Coors. There’s still a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction within the Latin community.”

Romero said although most of the 320 Latino-owned businesses that belong to the Latin Business Assn. are union companies, none of them has indicated plans to honor the AFL-CIO picket line.