A group of labor supporters and Denver workers on Monday rallied to support a ballot measure that could give city employees the right to negotiate new labor contracts.
Under federal and state law, public sector workers do not have the right to collective bargaining, the process of negotiating a labor contract with union representation. But every major Democratically controlled city in a blue state has granted its workers those rights in its city charter according to materials distributed by the Communications Workers of America, one of the groups supporting the charter amendment. That is, every city except for Denver.
The city council will vote on the measure July 8. If approved, the decision will be thrown to Denver voters on the November ballot.
Roughly 4,000 police officers, sheriff’s departments, firefighters and public school teachers already have the right to unionize and collectively bargain. The amendment to the charter would affect another 7,000 municipal city workers, including library workers, park rangers, trash collectors, social workers and others.
“As of today we know that 25% of city of Denver employees are able to collectively bargain,” City Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, one of the original sponsors of the measure, said at the Monday rally. “I want to say that 25% is not enough.”
How it works
For the charter amendment to make it onto the November ballot, seven of Denver’s 13-person council will have to support it. The measure was introduced in April by council members Gonzales-Gutierrez, Chris Hinds, Shontel Lewis and Sarah Parady, and has since received the support of council members Amanda Sawyer, Stacie Gilmore, Paul Kashmann, Flor Alvidrez and Council President Jamie Torres, who have all signed on as co-sponsors.
If the measure fails in city council, however, it can still appear on November’s ballot if organizers submit signatures from 10% of the county’s registered voters by the beginning of August. As of May, there are 545,841 registered or pre-registered voters in Denver County, so the measure would need roughly 54,000 signatures.
Organizers from the Communications Workers of America have already started collecting signatures in case the measure falls short in city council, but they are generally confident they have the support of city council and will be able to forgo the collection effort.
Movement toward collective bargaining
A similar change to the city charter has been tried twice — in 1980 and 1997 — and promises have been made to expand collective bargaining throughout the 2000s. But the post-pandemic tide has shifted the public attitude toward labor organizing in a major way.
As The Colorado Sun reported, support of unions grew to a 57-year-high in 2022 as Americans sympathized with frontline and service workers. But the threat of retaliation lingers until workers ratify a contract, which only a fraction of private sector unions have been able to do.
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Over the past few years, protections for public sector workers at the state level have been inching toward collective bargaining rights, with the legislature passing two bargaining-oriented bills in 2022 and 2023.
In 2022, Senate Bill 230 granted organizing and collective bargaining rights to county workers. The final bill extended rights to counties with more than 7,500 people and excluded city, school and college workers. Denver was excluded from the bill because it is a home rule county, a municipality where local ordinances and charters supersede state law.
The bill stopped short of granting some key leverage to workers, including not requiring counties to accept mediation during contract negotiations and prohibiting county workers in a union from going on strike, as reported by CPR.
In April Boulder County employees became one of the first groups to take advantage of the new labor rights, though the group has been meeting regularly since 2020.
Last year, Senate Bill 111 extended protections to public sector workers — including city and county workers in Denver — granting them the right to engage in the political process outside of work; express concerns with their terms of employment; and organize, form, join or assist an employee organization.
In other words, the bill gave workers a foothold to organize without fearing retaliation or disciplinary action from the employers, but stopped short of granting collective bargaining rights.
The workaround
Other industry-specific public sector workers have moved toward organizing through what is known as pre-majority unions, or groups of workers who act collectively but do not have a collective bargaining agreement.
Denver Public Library workers, for instance, have been operating as a pre-majority union since 2021, with representation by the Communication Workers of America Local 7799. CWA Local 7799 also represents Pikes Peak library workers, Colorado public defenders, Denver Health workers, UC Health workers and the United Campus Workers of Colorado.
If the measure makes it onto the November ballot, and if voters approve it, that doesn’t mean public sector workers will automatically renegotiate their contracts. A change in the charter would simply give workers the option to use a union to collectively bargain.
While library workers have shown much initiative in organizing, other groups that could be affected by the charter change, like park rangers, trash collectors and city planners, have not publicly shown any indication of unionizing.