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Colorado Activists Launch Ballot Campaign to Prevent Corporate Fraud, Protect Jobs |
Colorado working families yesterday hit the streets, gathering the first of the 76,000 signatures needed to put what The New York Times calls the “nation’s toughest corporate fraud law” on the November ballot.
Union, community, environmental and other activist members of the Protect Colorado’s Future coalition also began collecting signatures to qualify for a spot on the ballot, a measure to protect workers from being fired for no reason.
The corporate fraud measure would make CEOs and top execs personally liable if they commit fraud or condone it by not reporting it. It establishes both civil penalties and criminal—i.e., jail time.
Lew Ellingson, a former Qwest employee, told a Denver press conference he backed the ballot initiative to help prevent the kind of insider trading scandal that damaged the company’s reputation and led to a stock collapse that ruined the retirement security of Qwest employees.
We need to take action now to protect Colorado’s future from more Joe Nacchios. It’s a disgrace that Joe Nacchio is walking free today, while thousands of my co-workers and Qwest retirees are still paying the price for his greed. That’s why we need these initiatives—and we need them now.
Former Qwest CEO Nacchio was convicted in April 2007 of 19 counts of insider trading and sentenced to six years in prison and a $19 million fine. But the conviction was overturned in March. Ellingson says the Colorado corporate fraud initiative would help deter top execs from corporate skulduggery and fraud.
The other ballot measure would require employers to provide explanations for firing their employees. Under current Colorado law, people could be fired tomorrow for any reason—backing the wrong sports team or hairstyle—or no reason at all.
Along with backing these two measures, working families are mobilizing to defeat an anti-worker, “right to work” for less initiative backed by out-of-state special interests. Such laws limit workers’ rights to collectively bargain contracts, including wages and benefits. In 2004, average pay in so-called “right to work” states was 14.4 percent lower than in states where workers have the freedom to form strong unions.
After the measure’s backers submitted signatures to the secretary of state’s office in April, Protect Colorado’s Future filed a complaint alleging that many of the signatures had been fraudulently gathered. But on April 28, Secretary of State Mike Coffman cleared the measure for ballot spot, saying that while nearly 40,000 signatures may not have been valid, 94,000 of the 136,000 submitted signatures met the 76,000 threshold.
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