Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado
It takes little imagination or insight to understand how outrageous it would be for voters to have to elect candidates or approve ballot questions not once, but twice, just to “make sure” that voters were sure about their decisions.
It would be even more odious if the requirement to elect any candidate or approve any ballot question required 75% of voters to approve a candidate or question at the second election.
Given that, it’s easy to understand why thousands of workers and their supporters across the state are vexed by a problem that plagues only Colorado. The dilemma stems from Colorado requiring unionization elections to be repeated before they become official, and the second time, they must meet a 75% approval threshold.
Before you muster your feelings about unions, or consider how good or bad the twice-vote scheme is — good for anti-union business or anti-union workers — consider how critical and strong unionization rights have been in the United States for far more than a century.
During the late 1800s, industrialization brought workers mercilessly long hours, low wages and dangerous working conditions. Children were forced to work as long as 14 hours a day. Early labor organizations, including the American Federation of Labor, pushed for better treatment but faced regular resistance from employers and government officials, siding with wealthy business owners. Major labor conflicts, such as the Haymarket crisis in 1886, the Homestead Strike of 1892 and the Pullman Strike of 1894, highlighted tensions between industry leaders and workers, many of whom died from their jobs.
A landmark turning point came in 1935 with the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act. The law guaranteed most private-sector workers the right to form unions, engage in collective bargaining and participate in concerted activities for mutual aid and protection.
The right to unionize has long been recognized as nearly constitutional — except in Colorado.
Rich with mines, Colorado has long shunned the national trends and now is the only state that still allows rules that are nothing but union-busting relics.
In conservative, “right-to-work” states like Texas, one vote resulting in a simple majority of worker approval, 50% plus one person, creates a union. And like in Colorado and other “right to work” states, no employee can be forced to join or pay union dues.
For the past two years, state lawmakers have voted convincingly to repeal the shoddy requirement. This year, lawmakers backed House Bill 1005 to level the playing field, and both times, Gov. Jared Polis has vetoed the repeal. His most recent repeal was Friday.
Polis said he wanted business and labor unions to come to some sort of agreement on the issue.
Why would anti-union, pro-business factions give up the nation’s only nearly guaranteed union-prevention law or agree to diminish it when they have an iron-clad way to preserve it?
They would not.
And until the legislature can muster the votes to override another veto, or the next governor sees how this bill is nothing more than righting a grievous and anti-democratic wrong, anti-labor factions will win.
The average unionized laborer’s salary is about $40,000 a year in metro Denver, far below the average salary of $75,000 of all employees, according to state labor reports. Union and non-union workers are subject to the same market forces that set all wages across the state.
HB 1005 didn’t curry favor with unions or attempt to give pro-union forces an unfair advantage. It simply worked to bring this one-sided, unjustified and undemocratic swindle to an end.
If the fair-labor bars are only as high as the ones in Texas, Wyoming, North Dakota and every other state, and Colorado can’t meet the bar, something’s very wrong and needs to be made right.
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