Workers from the Pikes Peak Library District (PPLD) gathered at the Chinook Center, a community hub in southeast Colorado Springs, on Sunday to celebrate the official launch of Colorado’s newest public sector union.
“After all, who knows better how the library should be run than people who actually work at the library and have dedicated their lives to it,” said John Jarrell, Pikes Peak Library Workers United (PPLWU) president and the second vice chair of the El Paso County Democratic Party. “When we’re in a situation like we are right now, and resources are going to be limited, these decisions should not be exclusively made by a board made up of people, none of whom have ever worked in a library. So now there is a there’s a new player in this game, and it is Pikes Peak Library Workers United.”
Last February, PPLD CEO John Spears resigned from his position after the Colorado Springs City Council appointed two conservatives to the library board.
“The process surrounding how these appointments occurred was extremely contentious and pointed to the changes that are happening in our community such as the recent school board elections,” Spears told the Colorado Springs Independent. “It is my hope that the values that define a library such as freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and freedom of speech will continue to be honored. I look forward to moving to a community where they are not under threat.”
One of the appointees was Aaron Salt, a member of the Academy School District 20 Board of Education. D20, like Colorado Springs School District 11 and District 49, has become a focal point for conservative activists looking to remove “objectionable” books and oppose LGBTQ inclusion policies.
Jarrell says the main focus of PPLWU’s will be around staff sustainability, transparency, and safety. PPLD workers have made two previous attempts at unionizing, organizing last year over concerns about PPLD’s health care policy. Other speakers during Sunday’s event mentioned concerns about facilities and working conditions, as well as workplace culture.
Currently, public employee unions like PPLWU are not covered by the National Labor Relations Act, but recently passed legislation could give Colorado’s public employee unions similar status and protections.
“We sponsored Senate Bill 111,” said Jade Kelly, President of Communication Workers of America 7799, PPLWU’s parent organization. “We helped write that with a couple of other unions, Colorado Education Association, which has the biggest membership in the state of Colorado for K-12 educators, as well as the Colorado Professional Firefighters Association, to write a bill to fix a problem that started 90 years ago. When they wrote the Colorado Labor and Peace Act in order to settle with the unions at the time, they decided to move forward and move us out of a right to work state, but they did do a big, big carve out, and that carve out was for public workers. We are excluded from a lot of the workplace protections that those in the private industry have, and there are some basic, basic human rights.”
SB23-111 would give public employees, like those of the PPLD, the right to discuss or express views regarding public employee representation or workplace issues; engage in protected, concerted activity for the purpose of mutual aid or protection; fully participate in the political process while off duty and not in uniform, including speaking with members of the public employer’s governing body on terms and conditions of employment and any matter of public concern and engaging in other political activities in the same manner as other citizens of Colorado without discrimination, intimidation, or retaliation; and organize, form, join, or assist an employee organization or refrain from organizing, forming, joining, or assisting an employee organization.
Unionization for public employees has been a contentious issue in Colorado politics. Last year the legislature passed SB22-230, which granted collective bargaining rights to about 38,000 public-sector employees in Colorado, a compromise from the 250,000 workers that would have been covered, following opposition from Gov. Jared Polis and local officials, like the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners.
“I know Colorado is seen as a blue state, a state where obviously that’s more recent,” said Kelly. “We’ve seen anti-worker forces take over the Democratic Party in a lot of different ways, and it’s been really hard to even get through this bill, which I personally think is the bare minimum.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify that SB23-111 would not affect the National Labor Relations Act, but would extend protections to public employee unions in Colorado.
