A Republican-inspired, Democrat-authored ban on state employee strikes passed a Senate committee today with bipartisan, but lukewarm, support amid GOP concerns that the measure needs stiffer penalties.
House Bill 1189, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dan Gibbs, D-Silverthorne, won a 4-1 vote in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee--after the committee's Democrat majority killed Republican efforts to make the measure tougher.
Legislative Republicans had called on Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter to endorse a strike ban last fall after the governor issued his controversial executive order giving unions the power to collectively bargain for wages and benefits. Republicans now say the governor delivered on the ban but fell way short of the mark on the ability to enforce it.
"Obviously, this bill wouldn't have been introduced at all if Republicans hadn't urged the governor to do the right thing and assure taxpayers their vital public services wouldn't be jeopardized by the threat of a strike," the GOP's Sen. Bill Cadman, of Colorado Springs, said after the committee vote.
"Unfortunately, what we got from the governor and his allies in the legislature was a bare, minimum kind of guarantee," Cadman said. "This thing is enforced with a wet noodle."
|
Sen. Bill Cadman |
Republican lawmakers had charged last fall that the governor's executive order created a new incentive for unions to go on strike. The Republicans also pointed out--and the state attorney general confirmed--that Ritter's order had failed to make strikes by public employees illegal.
HB 1189 includes enforcement provisions that would do little to deter such strikes, its critics say. Its penalties include a fine of $50 a day per striker--a cost large unions could absorb easily--and the unlikely prospect of up to six months in jail.
Cadman's fellow Republican member on the committee, Sen. Dave Schultheis of Colorado Springs, made an attempt to fix that flaw with an amendment that significantly raised the stakes for state employees who go on strike. His amendment would have required the immediate termination of any state worker who strikes.
|
Sen. Dave Schultheis |
"I'm putting some teeth into this so it actually works," he said. The committee's three Democrats voted to kill his amendment.
Schultheis noted that some state employees provide key services such as guarding prisons and patrolling highways--which could be imperiled by strikes. Gibbs, who represents a mountain district, agreed.
"If CDOT can't plow, if our officers can't patrol, we're in trouble," he said.
Yet, Democrats on the committee expressed reservations about passing a strike ban at all. A succession of representatives from organized labor--a key ally in the Democrat coalition--showed up to testify against the measure.
Republicans have charged that Ritter's order granting bargaining power to unions was political payback to organized labor for its support to his party.
Last month, the Democrat majority on a House committee killed a Republican proposal that would have safeguarded the public from strikes by all public employees, including schoolteachers and Regional Transportation District drivers.