VOTE "NO!" an amendments 47, 49 & 54

By Adrienne Anderson

Do you care about public health and safety, economic justice and the environment in Colorado?

If so, smart voters might want to more carefully examine the current corporate-backed ballot initiatives - Amendments 47, 49 and 54 – which together seek to undermine Colorado’s working environment. [1] The gist of the measures would limit workers’ abilities voice concerns about conditions on the job and undermine their ability to come together to advocate for improvements, whether in the classroom as teachers, as firefighters charged with protecting our communities, or as nurses protecting sick patients amidst increasing corporatization of our health care system. Services that we all rely on would be compromised by such measures.

Further, in many cases, public and environmental health and safety would be at further risk. When workers who deal with hazardous materials or other dangerous conditions on the job are silenced, an effective and united voice within such plants that can be critical to the health and safety of surrounding communities is jeopardized.

Let’s take a local refinery. We count on the skill and training of workers at such worksites to know how to handle various dangerous operations involving a variety of toxic hazards, and prevent explosive conditions. Or what about asbestos workers, removing the dangerous materials from a school safely, so our children and the teachers and staff are not exposed? Many manufacturing sites involve dangerous chemicals that require careful handling, treatment and disposal. Historically, workers and their representatives act as the first line of defense in pushing for safe worksite practices and to ensure compliance with local sate and federal laws. That protects not only workers on the job, but the rest of us.

As numerous cases around Colorado reveal, employers who most aggressively seek to prevent their workers from uniting on the job are often those with the most egregious violations of law inside the workplace, and affecting the quality of neighboring communities beyond the fence line, and many times, well beyond. Many are major polluters who have chronic, even criminal violations of law, threatening public water supplies and despoiling other resources we rely upon for the quality of life we all seek to enjoy and protect in Colorado.

Let’s take a closer look at the chief corporate backers of Amendment 47 and their records of past activities in Colorado. This might serve to better inform the voting public as to whose interests are truly being served and what’s at stake in the current effort to permanently alter the State of Colorado’s constitution in favor of big corporate interests that even the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, the Denver Broncos and numerous other businesses oppose.

How did this all start?

As is often the case with efforts to enact regressive policies in Colorado and beyond, the road leads back to Golden, Colorado, where the network of companies led by various members of the right wing Coors clan of brewery fame operate along Clear Creek. The Coors industrial complex there has long been the source of major toxic pollution problems and chronic environmental and occupational safety and health violations for decades, threatening not only their own workers’ health and safety on the job, but air and water for communities downwind and/or downstream of their production operations and around various toxic offsite dumpsites used elsewhere around the Rocky Mountain region.

The current flurry of anti-worker measures appears to have been prompted by CoorsTek’s $200,000 financing of an a benign-sounding, though anonymous, non-profit entity[2] it created last spring to push for Amendment 47,[3] which essentially is a corporate-driven effort to get Colorado’s voters to ban all-union workplaces in the state.

The chief public proponent of this effort is Jonathan Coors, a 28-year-old member of the Coors brewery clan who holds a position as government relations director for CoorsTek, run by his father John K. Coors, Pete Coors’ brother. Within a couple of months, CoorsTek had doubled its initial contribution[i] and according to documents filed with the Colorado Secretary of State, remains the largest source of money flipped to yet another group,[4] followed by a $200,000 donation from an Arlington, Virginia-based organization called the “Free Enterprise Alliance.”

Among the few other contributors of any significance is American Furniture Warehouse, whose flashy and ultra-conservative owner Jake Jabs is best known for high-profile TV and newspaper advertising campaigns that feature wild animals like lions and tigers lounging about on couches and other items for sale. Jabs touts himself as the biggest furniture retailer in the country and has numerous big box stores that dot the state, including one he claims to be the largest furniture warehouse and showroom in the United States[5], in southeast metro Denver. All are stocked to the brim with a large volume of furnishings made by cheap labor outside the U.S. which can be sold here on the cheap, some of which off-gasses toxic vapors from particleboard and other lower-quality materials.

Jabs has become the public face for Amendment 47, doing an advertising blitz to sell voters on it, couching it as a “right to work” measure. In his flurry of ads sans the big cats, he fails to mention in his sales pitch how corporate fat cats would be the ones to profit further from its passage, by restricting workers’ abilities to unify around issues of common concern on the job and tipping the scales of economic justice even further out of balance in Colorado. Advocates for workers’ interests call Amendment 47 a “right to work for less” measure, pointing out that in states like Arizona where the measure has passed, wages are less than they are here.

A longtime Denver Post columnist once said of Jabs: “Selling furniture isn't anything like selling the truth.”[6]

Jabs: A Patriot?

The corporate logo for Jake Jabs’ furniture mega-stores is styled to look like an American flag, and the stars and stripes are typically emblazoned in oversized versions on ads pushing the week’s discounted dinette sets or other items. Whether like his use of Bengal tigers to sell particle board TV stands, his grand displays of patriotism are just another ad gimmick came into question when in the mid-1980’s Jake Jabs announced his candidacy as the Republican nominee for Colorado for the U.S. Senate.[7] Soon after his announcement, the Denver Post revealed that Jabs was not even a registered voter.[8] He quickly withdrew his candidacy, and in retaliation, also withdrew his substantial advertising revenues from the Post, for a time. Jabs has sparred with the Denver Post and other local media more than once, threatening retaliation – which he’s carried out - for any negative reporting about him.

With Jabs now serving as the most visible huckster for Amendment 47, Colorado’s newspapers and TV stations might feel they’re in a potential pocketbook pickle if they bring up any of the previously reported not-so-flattering facts regarding Jabs at a time when he’s pouring additional ad revenues into their coffers – over and above his usual furniture sales ads – while hawking the anti-worker initiative. In a recent editorial, nonetheless, the Denver Post has urged a “NO” vote on Amendment 47, as being bad for business/labor relations.[9]

Regarding his financial backing of Amendment 47, Jabs has told reporters flatly, “I’m not going to tell you how much money I’ve put in.”[10]

Records show the backers of Amendment 47 channeled moneys to get the measure on the ballot by using the creation of non-profit groups that have no disclosure requirements as channels, which masks the identity of their backers. While demonstrating his overt hostility for the public’s right to know important information regarding political campaign financing on matters that affect us all, Jabs says that he decided to take on the role as the public face of the anti-worker Amendment 47 because “people love me.”[12]

Jabs: An Animal Lover?

Those who enjoy Jabs’ ads featuring cuddly tiger and lion cubs might think Jabs is an animal lover. Not so, as he himself admits. His use of the big cats is just an advertising gimmick. Setting up such commercials requires a ready network of animal breeders, handlers and exhibitors to supply the cats. One such exhibitor who worked with Jabs’ American Furniture Warehouse to stage Jabs’ ads came under investigation when some of the exhibitors’ big cats – after an apparent parting of the ways with Jabs - were found abandoned and in poor condition around the base of Mt. Rushmore. This prompted an ensuing investigation by a South Dakota county sheriff’s office, Humane Society and U.S. Department of Agriculture, which had licensed the animal exhibitor. A Colorado non-profit group operating a wildlife refuge outside of Colorado Springs in eastern El Paso County rescued a dozen of the sick and malnourished animals. The non-profit group’s owners - reportedly believing that some of the mistreated cats had been among those previously used in Jabs’ ads - contacted American Furniture Warehouse seeking a contribution for the abandoned animals’ care and feeding. The company declined, paws off.[13]

While Jabs may not be an animal lover, records show he does support some various worthy charities in the region, including groups such as Easter Seals that support children with special needs.

As to any special needs of workers who manufacture the wares he sells, however? That’s another matter.

In order to sell at discount prices, he seeks out the cheapest labor worldwide. He favors importing from China over Mexico, he has said, because Mexico’s labor policies are “too liberal.”[14] While he says he’ll buy American-manufactured products when he can, if the price is right, and says that consumers don’t care where the products are made. He has built his furniture empire and personal fortune in significant part off the backs of cheap labor in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China.

Furthering this agenda to get the cheapest goods made by the cheapest labor in the world, Jabs in 2003 joined with another retailer to sever ties with American furniture manufacturers who were seeking duties on imports of bedroom sets from China allegedly being “dumped” into the U.S. market. Allegedly, the Chinese goods were being sold at costs below their costs to manufacture, putting U.S.-based furniture manufacturers, at a market disadvantage. The U.S. furniture makers who had united as the “Committee for Legal Trade” to object to this filed a petition with the U.S. International Trade Commission, saying, "Not only do we have a right to file this petition but we also have a duty to our shareholders and our workers to take a stand against unfair and illegal competition." As the industry magazine “Furniture Today” reported, Jabs’ American Furniture Warehouse and another retailer were retaliating against the U.S. furniture manufacturers who were part of this effort, by eliminating orders for furniture from participating companies And as for the avowed patriot’s loyalty to products made in the USA? Jabs has said that “usually American manufacturers can't compete on price,” and that consumers “don't care where it's from.”[16]

As to those who sell at American Furniture Warehouse? While any large retailer might draw some share of complaints, the nature of those alleged against Jabs by workers have included such charges as: forcing workers to vacuum, dust and do other cleaning without pay, docking salespeople’s commissions from their paychecks retroactively if merchandise they’d sold was returned, for whatever reason, and routinely ordering people off the job if they complained about any mistreatment. Most recently, the manager of Jabs’ Westminster store filed a suit, also alleging mistreatment.[17]

In 2004, a woman worker filed suit claiming she was fired from her job at American Furniture Warehouse’s Thornton store due to sex and age discrimination, harassment and other claims. She’d been granted the right to sue over the matter by the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. The woman had filed a report to police over an incident involving an alleged assault by Jabs himself. An investigation by Thornton Police led to no criminal charges being filed against the furniture mogul. Jabs threatened both the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News that he’d pull his ads with them if either reported the filing of the woman’s complaint. When the Post did publish a report on the complaint alleged despite the threat, Jabs followed through on his promise to withdraw his lucrative ad revenues once again from the newspaper, in retaliation.[18] Records reviewed show that this case proceeded beyond initial efforts by both American Furniture and Jabs’ to get the case dismissed, with the judge’s allowance of confidential filings in the matter that were not available for public review. Ultimately, the case ended up being dismissed.

(Note: The judge who heard this case, Edward Nottingham, recently announced his resignation from the bench, to be effective October 29, 2008. The judge was embroiled in a judicial investigation and public revelations over a sex scandal involving a high-end prostitution ring and other improprieties, the most recent in a series of prior judicial misconduct complaints alleged against the judge,[19] who had been appointed to the bench in 1989 by George H.W. Bush.[20] No allegations of bias against women or other impropriety involving Nottingham’s review of the case against Jabs, however, are known to have been argued, to date.)

CoorsTek: Right to Work, but Without Getting Ill?

As the major source of financial backing behind Amendment 47, the CoorsTek company of Golden - which operated under the name of Coors Porcelain throughout most of its history - deserves a closer look.

Given the history of the company’s operations on a plant site just upstream of the better-known brewery in Golden that location, dating back to 1910,[21] questions over whether workers at the plant have had the right to work without coming down with debilitating diseases warrants review. Also needing scrutiny is the firm’s handling and disposal of its various and voluminous volumes of toxic and even radioactive wastes, over the years, some of which is currently been dispersed around the region.

Throughout its history, workers at the plant have been subject to exposures to various dangerous materials on the job, given the nature of industrial products manufactured there, including many under contract with the military. Under such conditions, workers should hope that they are being adequately protected on the job, and able to advocate collectively for safe working conditions, full compliance with occupational and environmental health and safety laws, and best available practices for assuring protections of both workers on the job and communities downwind and downstream of the facilities’ operations.

A review of the record, however, poses troubling questions.

Missing Radioactive Waste?

Unmentioned on CoorsTek’s company’s website in its chronology of the company’s historical operations at its site in Golden is a gap of thirty years from the 1950’s through the 1980’s. They fail to mention that during those three decades, the Coors entity was engaged in some controversial and top-secret projects for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its successor agency, the Department of Energy (DOE).

Few are aware that on the site, Coors once produced nuclear fuel rods under a top-secret contract called “Project Pluto” with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the predecessor agency of the Department of Energy (DOE). Receiving significant quantities of highly enriched uranium and other nuclear materials from the AEC, records show various amounts of the dangerous materials from these government contract operations were discharged or dumped around the metro area. Further, some of the most dangerous wastes, including high-level, tightly controlled nuclear materials, could not accounted for to overseeing authorities at the end of their contract, as was required. Some of the wastes were discharged to area sewers, Clear Creek, or trucked to local dumps, archived AEC documents – once marked as “top secret” and “confidential” reveal.[22] Some of the toxic and nuclear wastes from Project Pluto era activities were even dumped in a Coors-owned mine shaft along the foothills north of Golden, above the road leading to the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant.

While reviewing this history may seem like old news, and irrelevant to questions of current operations, the long-lived nature of these wastes are of current concern, as they some of them are currently being discharged back into the public domain in ways which warrant continuing scrutiny.

For starters:

Lowry Landfill, Arapahoe County, at Gun Club and Quincy Roads. For years, the various Coors family companies, including the brewery and CoorsTek’s predecessor company dumped tons of wastes at the infamous Lowry Landfill, one of the nation’s worst Superfund sites. The Coors’ companies’ combined contributions made it the largest of the EPA-identified source of the pollution dumpers at the site, accounting for approximately a third of total volume of the 138 million gallons of liquid toxic and radioactive-contaminated water which have been oozing below and beyond the Arapahoe County dumping grounds for decades.

Some of the mix from Project Pluto-era wastes may have ended up there, either trucked there directly, since records AEC records show that a “Co. dump” received some of the wastes, and/or after initial disposal at Rocky Flats. A contract waste hauling company’s records show that multiple shipments of large volumes of liquid wastes were hauled from the bomb plant to Lowry Landfill in the 1970’s. This was after the time that Coors Porcelain had hauled some of its Project Pluto radioactive wastes to Rocky Flats via its own trucks. Further, AEC records show some of the Coors Porcelain Company’s nuclear wastes are missing and unaccounted for, in violation of the strict terms of government contracts at the time. Where they ended up, and are now, is anybody’s guess.

Among the additional possibilities, beyond Rocky Flats and Lowry Landfill:

* Ladwig Mine, Jefferson County, along Highway 93, north of Golden. Downstream from this clandestine dumpsite, mysteriously higher than acceptable levels of radiation during the 1980’s were recorded by Denver Water officials were detected downstream of this mine, owned by Coors, and moving toward one of its major sources of major sources of drinking water for the Denver metro area, Ralston Reservoir. The levels recorded were higher than those upstream, where the Cotter Corporation was operating the Schwartzwalder uranium mine with related discharges at the time.

* In some of metro Denver’s parks and recreations area.

In recent years, an unresolved controversy was spawned as over a thousand ducks died after alighting on the toxic sewage ponds. Records show it was Coors agents who engineered and heavily lobbied the EPA to enact this plan for its various entities and industrial partners seeking to limit their environmental liabilities. As a result of their successful lobbying effort, for the next half century is to disperse an estimated 138 million gallons of toxic and radioactive-contaminated liquids impacting regional groundwater at the Superfund site back into the public domain, largely at public expense, and even including the flushing of wastes like plutonium, tritium, strontium-90 and other nuclear materials which cannot be treated using processes in place. These wastes are being commingled with sewage wastewater from throughout the region and recirculated further back into the public domain with only partial treatment. Described as environmentally friendly “recycled water,” this liquid is now being used to fill public lakes at Denver’s Washington Park and City Park lakes where water quality degradation has been documented by the city’s own tests and attributed to the shift to this source in 2004.[23] It also is being used to irrigate several school grounds, public parks and redevelopment areas, including Lowry and Stapleton neighborhoods.

* Apollo, Pennsylvania. That’s another story.

According to the Center for Disease Control:

“Coors Porcelain also performed beryllium work for the Atomic Energy Commission. An early

AEC document makes reference to Coors Porcelain’s involvement in beryllium work during

the period from 1947-1948. Another aspect of the Project Pluto contract involved the use of beryllium ceramics for the project, which began in 1957 and ended in 1964. Coors Porcelain performed other beryllium work for DOE after the completion of Project Pluto. A 1993 health study of Coors workers indicated that the company produced beryllia ceramics though 1975, presumably for the AEC/DOE.”

As a DOE website confirms, the 1993 health study mentioned above does show that workers from this facility had chronic beryllium disease. CoorsTek representatives acknowledged to inquiring DOE officials that (1) beryllium ceramics were produced from beryllium oxide in Building 16, (2) Building 16 was used for research and development from 1975-1983; (3) during 1983-1984, the building was decontaminated, torn down and disposed of as hazardous material; and (4) no other records were provided about beryllium decontamination between 1976 and 1984. The documentation and information provided by current company officials indicated that no record of beryllium decontamination could be found for 1976-1984.

That workers at Coors Porcelain have suffered serious exposures to various toxic threats on the job, without proper occupational safety and health protections, is evident from review of the historical record. And some former Coors Porcelain workers suffering with chronic lung disease from inhalation exposure to the toxic beryllium metal might surely have wished for better protections on the job. Would the provisions of Amendment 47 have protected them from such exposures? No. If passed, as CoorsTek now advocates, would it protect current and future workers at the plant?

Against a rabidly anti-union management during all of those years, could workers united with a strong health and safety program have better protected themselves as Coors Porcelain plant workers, as they handled highly toxic and radioactive materials and for the further protection of downstream communities beyond? At many locales around Colorado and elsewhere in the U.S., it has been workers united and afforded the protections of their labor organizations and their representatives who have come forward to reveal egregious violations of law which posed threats to workers within the plant site, and often, posing threats to communities beyond.

What about any toxic impacts from discharges to downstream communities these days? It might be hard to determine, since Coors was the chief proponent of a measure passed in the1990’s which allows records of any environmental violations which companies self-report to the Colorado Department of Health and the Environment (CDPHE) to be kept secret. So much for the public’s right to know.

But from CoorsTek’s own filings with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission, we do know that:

“CoorsTek has received a demand for payment arising out of contamination of a semiconductor manufacturing facility formerly owned by a subsidiary of CoorsTek, Coors Components, Inc. Colorado State environmental authorities are seeking clean up of soil and ground water contamination from a subsequent owner.

CoorsTek has received a Unilateral Administrative Order issued by the EPA relating to the Rocky Flats Industrial Park (RFIP) Site. CoorsTek and some of its facilities have been notified that they may be or have been named as potentially responsible parties ("PRPs") under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 or similar state laws with respect to the remediation of certain sites where hazardous substances have been released into the environment. CoorsTek cannot predict with certainty the total costs of remediation, its share of the total costs, the extent to which contributions will be available from other parties, the amount of time necessary to complete the remediation, or the availability of insurance. In addition, “CoorsTek has received demands or requests for information relating to alleged contamination of various properties currently or formerly owned by CoorsTek or to which CoorsTek allegedly shipped waste.”

We are aware of groundwater contamination at some of our properties in Colorado resulting from historical, ongoing, or nearby activities.”[24]

In Colorado, CoorsTek has manufacturing facilities in Golden and Grand Junction. CoorsTek also has subsidiaries around the world, including one in Korea.[25]

Many Colorado-based environmental organizations, including the Colorado Environmental Coalition, the Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center and others, are urging Coloradans to vote “NO!” on Amendments 47, 49 and 54. Such groups recognize that supporting workers and their families benefits our communities overall, keeps the economic scales of justice more balanced, leads to safer products and improved services, creates a better environment for workplace and environmental protection, and leads to better ways that benefit us all.

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About the author: Adrienne Anderson, a longtime advocate around occupational and environmental health issues in Colorado, served on the University of Colorado faculty for 11 years, teaching Environmental Ethics.  She has researched corporate and environmental abuses for 30 years with various environmental, public interest and labor alliances, including the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, and works in support of those currently endorsing the opposition to Amendments 47, 49 and 54.  She resides in Denver.