{"id":40993,"date":"2022-04-25T19:22:04","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T01:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/county-employees-would-be-able-to-collectively-bargain-but-not-strike-under-new-measure\/"},"modified":"2022-04-26T01:22:04","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T01:22:04","slug":"county-employees-would-be-able-to-collectively-bargain-but-not-strike-under-new-measure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/county-employees-would-be-able-to-collectively-bargain-but-not-strike-under-new-measure\/","title":{"rendered":"County employees would be able to collectively bargain \u2013 but not strike \u2013 under new measure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Lawmakers
Lawmakers are seen at the Capitol\u2019s House floor on Jan. 12 in Denver at the start of Colorado\u2019s General Assembly\u2019s 2022 session. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado\u2019s 38,000 county employees would be able to collectively bargain \u2013 but not strike \u2013 under a long-awaited, pared-back public workers unionization bill set to be introduced Monday by Democrats in the state Legislature.<\/p>\n

The measure comes as the 2022 lawmaking term heads into its final two weeks and despite opposition from a statewide association of county governments, which last week held a news conference blasting the forthcoming bill and expressing anxiety about it driving up their costs.<\/p>\n

Earlier versions of the legislation would have expanded the collective bargaining rights extended to state employees in recent years to all public workers, including municipal and higher education employees. The latter group was begging lawmakers to include them in the measure amid fierce opposition from the state\u2019s colleges and universities.<\/p>\n

But, ultimately, the sponsors of the measure chose to go a narrower route instead of a measure that would have affected more than 250,000 workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day,\u201d said Senate President Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat and one of three prime sponsors of the measure, \u201cwe can\u2019t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We didn\u2019t take them out because we didn\u2019t have the votes. It was because of a deliberate conversation with workers and, honestly, some of the workers were split on how they wanted to proceed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans are expected to fight the measure as it\u2019s debated in the Legislature, but they don\u2019t have the votes to block its passage unless Democrats cross party lines.<\/p>\n

Gov. Jared Polis remains a potential hurdle to the legislation. He expressed opposition to earlier versions of the measure and has the power to veto the bill if it reaches his desk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look forward to looking at it,\u201d the governor told The Colorado Sun on Monday.<\/p>\n

But House Majority Leader Danyea Esgar, a Pueblo Democrat and another prime sponsor of the bill, said proponents did everything they could to appease him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor has been pushing this whole time to really make sure that we have a bill that mirrors that Colorado WINS bill,\u201d Esgar said, referencing the 2020 measure granting collective bargaining rights to the state employees\u2019 union, Colorado WINS. \u201cWe\u2019ve done as much as we possibly can, knowing the counties in the state are a little different, to mirror that bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is nothing in the bill that would force a county commission to adopt a contract with a union made up of its county\u2019s workers. But workers couldn\u2019t be fired or discriminated against for organizing or participating in a union under the bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis genuinely will just be a conversation between the workers and the county commissions,\u201d Fenberg said. \u201cThere is no process that forces anyone\u2019s hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collective bargaining rights would let county workers vote to form a union and then negotiate over pay, benefits and working counties.<\/p>\n

County commissioners are still wary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe increased cost of collective bargaining will make the difficulty of dealing with rapidly rising costs even worse,\u201d Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas, a Republican, said at the news conference last week. \u201cAnd our citizens will suffer in the form of reduced services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado Counties Inc., a nonpartisan organization representing the state\u2019s counties, called the measure \u201ca solution in search of a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill would not apply to Denver and Broomfield counties because they are city-county combinations.<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City, is the third prime sponsor of the bill.<\/p>\n

This is a developing story that will be updated<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republicans expected to fight the pared-back public workers unionization bill<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,394,94,14,2336,15,233,1605,1606,1255,819,1922,1633],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-40993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-legislature","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-colorado-state-house-of-representatives","tag-colorado-state-officials","tag-colorado-state-senate","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-employee","tag-employer","tag-employment","tag-gov-jared-polis","tag-labor","tag-unions"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40993"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=40993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}