Businesses Seek Colorado Right-to-Work Law
October 6, 2008
 Labor unions have united to beat back a host of anti-union measures placed by business groups on the November ballot, including a right-to-work proposal.
The right-to-work amendment, 47, is among 14 ballot questions that will be put to voters in Colorado. Denver Local 68 President Ed Knox said his members are mobilizing to defeat it.
“We have every reason to be optimistic that we can defeat the three bad amendments, but only if our members vote all the way down the ballot, and if they educate their friends and family members,” Knox said. “If it happens in Colorado, of course, the message is that your state is next.”
Denver Local 68 member John Soper, a state representative, signs on to Colorado labor’s Principles for
Change pledge. Labor is uniting to fight November’s business-backed right-to-work ballot initiative.
Labor groups challenged many of the required 76,000 signatures to place the proposition on the ballot earlier this year, but that effort stalled on the desk of the secretary of state, a Republican.
Unions countered by offering their own ballot measures, including one that would require businesses with 20 or more employees to provide health insurance and another that would ban employers from firing workers without a specific reason. But an Oct. 2 agreement between business and labor removed the union-backed issues from the ballot in exchange for business support for defeating some of the anti-worker measures.
Now the unions will receive $3 million from business to help them fight Amendment 47.
U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, Gov. Bill Ritter, U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, Democrats, were instrumental in pushing for a compromise.
“This now gives us an opportunity, assuming we can defeat 47, to return to the labor peace where labor and business can work together to solve the challenges we face,” Hickenlooper said after the agreement.
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