by Mike Hall, Jan 31, 2007

Colorado workers and their unions are close to changing one of the most bizarre labor laws in anybody’s book.

In Colorado, after workers vote to join a union, they can sit across the bargaining table from their employer and negotiate everything from wages to health care to hours to working conditions.

But even after the workers overcome the already difficult and employer-weighted election process and elect to join a union, Colorado law forbids the workers and their union to begin negotiations over one item—a union security clause. A union security clause doesn’t force anyone to join the union, it simply requires that all workers, member or non-member, pay representational costs.

Colorado is the only state in the nation that limits bargaining in this way. If the workers and their union even want to bring the issue up with the employer, they must first hold another election, and in this second election—the majority doesn’t rule. Colorado law requires that 75 percent of those voting or a majority of all those eligible to vote—not just a majority of those who cast ballots—must approve of putting a union security clause on the bargaining table.

The Colorado House of Representatives already has passed a bill eliminating the second election requirement and the state Senate is expected to approve the legislation later this week. Newly elected Gov. Bill Ritter (D), who campaigned on the issue last fall, is expected to sign the bill.

Business groups and extremist anti-union groups are raising a ruckus and staging a misinformation campaign claiming that eliminating the super-majority second election would force Colorado’s workers to join unions, tip the workplace balance of power to unions and devastate Colorado’s economy…blah, blah, blah. The usual hogwash.

In recent testimony before a House committee, Colorado AFL-CIO President Steve Adams presents a calmer and more concise description:

What the bill does is simple. Once a union has been democratically elected…the union then enters into the collective bargaining process, or negotiations over a contract with the employer.
 
HB 1072…removes one archaic provision from the state’s Labor Peace Act. It eliminates the need for the state to conduct an election amongst workers as to whether the duly elected union can bring the issue of an all union agreement, or union security clause to the bargaining table with the employer.

It’s important to remember how the bargaining process works. The employer and the employee organization both bring issues to the table and either side may refuse to consider any of them during negotiations. The employer is not asked to conduct an election of its board of directors or share holders in order to bring any issue to the bargaining table. The employees are not asked to hold an election on any other issue in order to receive the go ahead to have it considered in bargaining.

Richard Rosenblatt, a Colorado labor lawyer, points out that union security clauses don’t force anyone to join a union and the unions must represent all workers at a workplace regardless if they join the union.

If such a union security provision is in a collective bargaining agreement…it requires the employees in the bargaining unit…either be a member of the union or pay the equivalent in fees. Fee payers, who are not members, can express their desire not to contribute to non-representation related activities of the union and in that case the fee payer pays the equivalent in fees, less the amount the union spends on non-representation related activities…those dues and fees are used to provide representation services to all employees in the unit, whether or not they join the union.

In a guest column in The Mountain Mail, Raymond Hogler, a management professor at Colorado State University, says the state’s 64-year-old second election law, the so-called Labor Peace Act, is “profoundly anti-democratic” and that the bill to eliminate the second election doesn’t force anyone, employer or worker, into a union security agreement.

Elimination of the second election doesn’t compel an employer to agree to a union security arrangement. If a union or an employer believes union security isn’t in their best interest, they reject it in the negotiation process. If an all-union agreement is accepted tentatively, the contract is subject to ratification by the bargaining unit.

If a majority opposes the security provision, they can vote against it…

…The current law requiring a second election is profoundly anti-democratic. The late Milton Friedman pointed out laws against union security deprive workers of freedom to enter contracts ensuring everyone who benefits from collective action will pay a fair share.

If the Peace Act offered a useful model, presumably other states would have adopted it by now, but not a single state has considered it.

Colorado is the only state with such an idiosyncratic and peculiar treatment of union security. It’s time to consign the law to the scrap heap of bad political choices.