Negotiations over a pro-union bill in the Colorado House collapsed over the weekend after labor officials rejected Gov. Jared Polis’ attempt to expand talks to include other deeply contentious pieces of legislation.
The policies that the governor tried to reopen included cuts to restaurant workers’ wages, an expansion of charter schools, and privatizing the state’s last-resort insurer for workers’ compensation. The details of the discussions were confirmed by five people with direct knowledge of them, including House Speaker Julie McCluskie.
Polis raised the issues with unions after business groups rejected Polis’ most recent attempt to resolve negotiations over Senate Bill 5, which would undo a unique provision of Colorado’s labor law that labor and Democrats argue is anti-union. Labor groups had previously agreed to Polis’ last proposal.
The attempt to broaden the talks instead finally ended them completely. As a result, House lawmakers were set to begin debating the bill — which has hovered on the chamber’s calendar for weeks to allow room for negotiations — first thing Monday morning.
Democratic lawmakers have sufficient votes to pass the measure. But Polis has privately told legislators he will veto the bill unless they secure the support of business groups like the Colorado Chamber of Commerce and Colorado Concern.
That’s prompted weeks of negotiations over how to reform Colorado’s second-election requirement, which holds that organized workers must pass a second vote — and clear a 75% threshold — before they can negotiate the provision of union contracts that deals with dues and fees. SB-5 would eliminate the second election entirely, to the alarm of business groups.
Negotiations stretched into Friday, as the clock on the legislative session — which ends Wednesday — ticked down.
Loren Furman, the CEO of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, confirmed Monday morning that business groups rejected Polis’ last proposal. It would have eliminated the second election in certain circumstances, based on election turnout and union organizers’ margin of victory in the first election, which is what establishes the union in the first place. She said the groups stuck to their final of three compromises, which proposed higher thresholds than Polis was offering.
Furman said she did not know Polis had sought to broaden the talks to include other topics like tipped wage cuts.
After the labor groups accepted and businesses rejected Polis’ last proposal, the governor then gave SB-5’s supporters a choice: They could go back and reach a deal with business officials. Or they could move forward with his final offer — even without business groups’ approval — so long as SB-5’s supporters were willing to open talks on separate and deeply contentious proposals.
Those policies — cutting tipped workers’ wages, allowing for more charter schools in certain areas and privatizing the state’s workers’ comp insurer — had been debated at various levels in the Capitol earlier this year. All had either been shelved outright or significantly watered down.
But they were considered so radioactive to SB-5 supporters that some officials involved in the negotiations privately wondered if the governor was intentionally offering them something they would reject.
In a statement Saturday night announcing that talks had broken down, Dennis Dougherty, the executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO, accused business groups of walking away from negotiations. He said unnamed “elected leaders are kowtowing to corporate special interests over Colorado’s working families.”
In a Saturday evening statement, Polis spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said the governor “worked hard with both labor and business to try to reach an agreement” on SB-5.
“Unfortunately, although we came very close, the gap could not be bridged between labor and business on a stable agreement,” she wrote.
Asked Monday morning about Polis’ attempt to broaden the talks to include other concerns, Wieman was unable to immediately provide comment.
With negotiations over, Democratic lawmakers were set to debate SB-5. That would then force Polis to decide whether to veto a Democratic priority bill that is likely to pass with overwhelming support from lawmakers of his own party.
“The House Democrats broadly support this approach, and they want to see that policy move through the House and be presented to the governor for signature,” McCluskie said Saturday night.
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“These topics are ones that this caucus has already said no to,” she said of House Democrats. “And the fact that the governor would put that on the table for (a minor change in labor law) and still have a second vote (by unions) — even business didn’t put that on the table.”
McCluskie said the compromise that unions accepted was “reasonable.” She praised both sides for engaging in good faith but said she was “really disappointed that (business officials) walked away.”
“You look at Senate Bill 5 — it’s got the votes, right on the bill,” McCluskie said, referring to the number of listed co-sponsors.
Furman, of the chamber, said business groups had negotiated earnestly and that business groups’ three offers showed “significant” movement.
Lawmakers had considered voting on SB-5 on Saturday, when the House convened for much of the day, but held off in a last-ditch bid to reach a deal.
The potential impact of the SB-5 negotiations collapsing — and of a potential Polis veto — are significant.
Had they reached an acceptable deal on the bill, labor unions had pledged to withdraw a 2026 ballot proposal that would require businesses to have just cause before firing someone. A competing ballot measure — to enact an anti-union “right-to-work” law in the state — has also been proposed and also would’ve been taken down had the negotiations borne fruit.
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