Democrats seeking this year to install sweeping new union rights for hundreds of thousands of Colorado public\u00a0employees are up against a familiar obstacle in Gov. Jared Polis, and they’re in talks about scaling back their bill to get it passed and signed into law.<\/p>\n
What they want to do is confer the right to unionize and collectively bargain upon firefighters, teachers, snowplow drivers and other workers across the public sector, where labor rights are fewer than in the private sector. Some of these workers already belong to unions, and a smaller subset already engages in collective bargaining over pay, benefits and working conditions. The proposal in question would force public-sector employers to recognize unions when workers form them, and to negotiate contracts with those unions.<\/p>\n
What lawmakers will end up pursuing is almost certainly less ambitious than that.<\/p>\n
“We need to figure out what is the right structure for how folks would create a union, collectively bargain — and who is included in that and who might not be included,” said Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat and a lead sponsor of the bill, which is still yet to be introduced.<\/p>\n
Fenberg and his co-lead, House Majority Leader and Pueblo Democrat Daneya Esgar, are facing plenty of opposition and are likely to face even more as their effort advances.<\/p>\n
Bills don’t become laws without the governor’s signature, and he’s taken the rare — for him, anyway — step of going public with concerns about Democratic legislation.\u00a0Polis, also a Democrat, said earlier this month that he would not support the proposal in its “current form.”<\/p>\n
It’s not clear what that form is, as the bill is yet to be introduced and sponsors have not released drafts, but it’s clear that proponents’ goal creates bigger changes than Polis wants right now.<\/p>\n
He could support “much narrower legislation,” his office said.<\/p>\n
Polis has on multiple recent occasions declined to say much more on the topic. He told The Denver Post last week he wouldn’t “negotiate in the press,” and reiterated that at a news conference Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“We are in talks, trying to bring together local government and workers’ representatives around a solution that will work for Colorado,” he said.<\/p>\n
Polis ran for governor as a friend to labor, but his record in office isn’t so clear. He opposed a 2019 bill to let state employees collectively bargain but backed it in 2020. When The Denver Post asked Polis on Jan. 13 to comment on the since-resolved King Soopers worker strike, he declined to take a side in the labor dispute and side-stepped a question about whether he’d cross the picket line. On Jan. 18 he told Colorado Public Radio he wouldn’t cross the picket line.<\/p>\n
Lobbyists and lawmakers say they are trying to discern what exactly Polis wants.<\/p>\n
Polis has frustrated Colorado Democrats on other issues during his first term. His positions\u00a0at many points haven’t lined up neatly or even roughly with those of most Democrats in the state House and Senate, which has made for more intra-party policy fights than lawmakers planned for when he ran on a largely progressive platform.<\/p>\n
With the 2022 legislative session barely two weeks old, Fenberg seems to have accepted that whatever gets introduced will not be entirely true to his stated guiding principle: “No matter who you work for, you should have some basic rights and be able to collectively bargain with your co-workers.”<\/p>\n
“Does that mean I’ll only accept a perfect bill? No, of course not. That’s not the world we live in,” he said. “I never expected this bill or any other bill to be perfect.”<\/p>\n
Neither Fenberg nor Esgar offered specifics as to which kinds of workers or workplaces might be left out of the bill.<\/p>\n
“We’re still in the process of going through the bill step-by-step with (Polis) and his office to really see what it is that he can go with and what he’ll draw a line in the sand with,” said Esgar, a sponsor of the 2019 and 2020 state-employee bills, and thus a veteran of the negotiating-with-Jared-Polis-on-labor experience.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had multiple meetings and we have multiple meetings to go,” she said.<\/p>\n
Just last week she predicted the bill could debut this month; now she’s hesitant to put a date on it.<\/p>\n
These lawmakers may well have to work on some of their own colleagues, too, in addition to their talks with Polis.<\/p>\n
The bill will start in the House, where Democrats have a 41-24 edge over Republicans and can go fairly progressive without risking policy defeats.\u00a0But the margin is narrower in the Senate — 20-15 — and so just three Democratic “no” votes can kill a policy. Moderates like Arvada Democratic state Sen. Rachel Zenzinger can wield considerable power in Senate negotiations, as they did on the so-called “public option” health insurance bill from last year, or the bill to create broad new paid family and medical leave benefits for workers.<\/p>\n
“I’m going to be cautious and I’m not just going to hop on board quite yet until I know the details,” Zenzinger said of the public-sector union bill.<\/p>\n
“Every bill has to operate in the context of the moment you’re trying to pass it. Right now we have to think about the economy, … labor shortages, all sorts of things that impact the reality of how this bill is situated.”<\/p>\n
While opposition from lawmakers on the left is possible, it’s guaranteed from those on the right.<\/p>\n
Said state Sen. Larry Liston, a Colorado Springs Republican who serves on the Senate’s Business, Labor and Technology Committee, the public-sector proposal “would have a gargantuan fiscal impact on these cities, on other public-sector employers. The people are not asking for this. I don’t hear it at all from my constituents.”<\/p>\n
He said workers he’s talked to don’t want it either.<\/p>\n
The fire department in his own city, Colorado Springs, has tried and failed multiple times to get voters to let them collectively bargain — permission they wouldn’t need under the Democrats’ proposal.\u00a0Asked whether those ballot efforts disprove his assessment that workers don’t want greater union rights, Liston said, “Everybody wants to grease their skids, … but the majority, the basic rank and file, they go, ‘You know, I really don’t need this.’”<\/p>\n
He predicted zero Republicans would vote for the concept.<\/p>\n
“Well, maybe one,” Liston added, gesturing toward the desk of moderate state Sen. Kevin Priola, a Henderson Republican who often sides with Democrats.<\/p>\n
“No,” Priola told The Post. “I’m not a fan of that policy.”<\/p>\n
Neither are some potent lobbying groups, including those representing local governments. The Colorado Municipal League, which lobbies for towns and cities across the state, has argued that the proposal violates local-control laws. They’ll have plenty of allies making that case if and when there’s a bill to speak of. Given its connection to hundreds of different governments and employers, the bill is likely to be among the most heavily lobbied of the 2022 session.<\/p>\n
Labor leaders and their legislative supporters say the bill is not existentially threatened, that it is indeed coming. Esgar and Fenberg went as far as to say they are confident their bill will become law, even if they don’t know exactly what it will say.<\/p>\n
“I think there’s a lot of room to land somewhere where everyone can agree,” Fenberg said. “Genuinely.”<\/p>\n