A win for big labor and a loss for Colo. taxpayers, workers
Gov. Jared Polis recently signed into law House Bill 1153, a long-sought union priority permitting collective bargaining by nearly 30,000 unionized state employees.
While employees certainly deserve a voice in the workplace, HB 1153 is fundamentally a political move, passed along party-lines, designed to empower a permanent interest group propped up by taxpayers.
Rep. Daneya Esgar, D-Pueblo, the bill’s sponsor, contended the legislation will let state workers “advocate for higher wages, better working conditions, and the wellbeing of themselves and their families through collective bargaining.”
Of course, nothing prevented state workers from advocating for themselves and petitioning public officials just like any other interest or activist group. If anything, state employees already had special ability to petition government under an executive order issued by then-Gov. Bill Ritter in 2007 obligating the state to bargain with state employee unions over workplace matters. In reality, HB 1153 saddles state workers with an unaccountable, one-size-fits-all, once-and-for-all union. The legislation automatically recognizes Colorado WINS — the union that came to represent state workers under Ritter’s executive order — as employees’ sole representative. Further, the law places all covered employees in a single bargaining unit on behalf of which Colorado WINS will negotiate a single contract. To discourage unions from prioritizing certain employee groups over others in bargaining, labor laws typically have a government board define appropriate bargaining units so that employees in each perform similar work and share similar interests. Lumping all 30,000 state workers into a single unit is a recipe for union leadership to play favorites at the bargaining table. Unfortunately, employees have little recourse should they eventually sour on Colorado WINS’s representation. The law provides the union can only be decertified during a 30-day period every four years. Just calling for a vote requires getting a third of the bargaining unit — more than 10,000 people — to petition for decertification or a different union.
Think of it as a state-sanctioned monopoly designating Colorado WINS as the sole provider of workplace representation to state workers, indefinitely.
Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, individual employees dissatisfied with the union can at least refuse to support it financially.
But HB 1153 undermines that constitutional right, too. The law grants the union access to newhire orientations so it can pressure employees into signing up for membership. It also requires the state to furnish employees’ personal contact information — including home address, phone numbers, and emails — to the union. Even if an employee optsout of the automatic data sharing, the union stills receive their work contact information.
Most insidiously, the bill requires the state to deduct union dues directly from employees’ paychecks. Payroll deduction of union dues is a relic of the industrial age rendered largely obsolete by credit cards and electronic fund transfers and, in government, means taxpayers subsidize union fundraising. Its main purpose is to maximize unions’ ability to collect dues by minimizing employees’ control over their own paychecks.
For instance, HB 1153 lets the union secure dues deduction authorizations from employees in writing, electronically or even telephonically at any time. To cancel dues withholdings, however, employees must object in writing to the union — not the state, which actually processes the deductions — during an annual 30day window.
Beyond the obvious doublestandard, other states that have similarly given unions control over their payroll systems have already experienced abuse as blatant as unions forging employees’ signatures on membership forms.
Also concerning is that the law exempts union contract negotiations from normal state open government rules, meaning taxpayers can’t observe negotiations or review bargaining proposals, even though they must fund and live with the results. That the governor will bargain behind-closeddoors with a union that endorsed and heavily invested in his election campaign makes the arrangement even more unseemly.
While a victory for Big Labor, Colorado’s state workers and taxpayers will grapple with the fallout from HB 1153 for decades to come.