Rocky Mountain News
Business Section
By Dan Pilcher, Senior Vice President of CACI
1/27/07
Gutting Labor Peace Act does harm to workers, businesses
Make no doubt about it: Torpedoing the 63-year-old Colorado Labor Peace Act will only benefit unions if the Colorado General Assembly passes controversial HB-1072 and Gov. Bill Ritter signs it into law.
The bill's vocal lead supporter is the Colorado AFL-CIO.
The "fast-tracked" bill cleared the House on Monday and is pending in the Senate.
Although unionized workers accounted for only 8.3 percent of the Colorado work force in 2005, their influence at the state Capitol has grown strongly since the 2004 elections.
Union "small-donor committees" have played an increasingly disproportionate role in the financing of state legislative elections. The unions are understandably hellbent on increasing the number of unionized workers and the role that union donations will play in the 2008 elections and beyond - and HB-1072 will help them.
In plain English, HB-1072 will gut the current law.
It will remove the central provision that workers in a company (where a union has already gained authority to act as the collective bargaining unit through a simple majority vote) would have to vote a second time by secret ballot on whether or not they would authorize the union to negotiate an "all-union agreement" with the employer.
Under an all-union agreement, workers have three choices:
• Join the union and pay dues.
• Not join the union but pay "agency fees" to the union for the cost of representing them, less the cost of the union's political activities.
• Be fired by the employer at the request of the union if the workers do not choose either of the first two options.
The current Labor Peace Act calls for either a majority of all eligible voters, or 75 percent of all eligible workers voting, whichever is greater, to approve the second election.
This "supermajority" prevents a minority of union workers from imposing its will on the majority of workers.
Business, workers and the public were clearly the intended beneficiaries of the act when the legislature passed it in 1943, according to Colorado labor-law expert Barbara Thompson, executive vice president of the Mountain States Employers Council.
In a memo to Chuck Berry, president of the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, Thompson said the act "provides reasonable restrictions" on the ability of unions to force compulsory membership or payment of agency fees by workers.
Workers and job applicants who do not want to join a union or pay agency dues under an all-union agreement will clearly not benefit from HB-1072.
Businesses will clearly not benefit because they will be forced to fire or not hire these workers.
The public will clearly not benefit because the state's economic competitiveness will be tarnished, and its economic development efforts will be hampered.
Colorado is surrounded by right-to-work states (except for New Mexico) where all-union agreements are prohibited.
Alone among the 50 states, Colorado occupies the middle ground between the 22 right-to-work states and the pro-union states where all-union agreements are allowed.
From the business perspective, therefore, it's impossible to see how repealing the second election requirement of the act will increase Colorado's competitiveness in the global marketplace.
Such a step will most likely decrease prospects for state and local economic development officials to recruit firms to Colorado and retain existing companies.
Unfortunately for Colorado, unions will be the clear and sole beneficiaries from HB-1072, which will make it far easier for unions to negotiate all-union agreements with employers and swell union membership rolls, coffers and political action committee funds for years to come.