Colorado gets singled out for a lot of onlys: the only state in which every inch of ground is at least 1,000 feet above sea level, the only state to have turned down hosting the Winter Olympics, the only state to have 58 fourteeners.
And the only state to require two consecutive elections for meaningful union representation.
That’s right, two.
Right now, workers in Colorado have the right to organize if they vote in an open and fair election and receive a majority of votes in favor of union representation. But that right only goes so far. They may have won the vote, but after the election, workers are barred from even negotiating for something called union security. Union security is like expense reimbursement for contract negotiations.
After that first vote, the workers are essentially allowed to have a volunteer union. They are actually constrained from what they can negotiate for with their own union members until they’ve had a second election. And that election requires 75% of the workers to vote in favor of it. Once the supermajority votes in favor, then the union can discuss fees for union membership — not impose fees, just discuss them.
Now, this is (supposedly) better than those states that outlaw union fee collection altogether (so-called “right-to-work” states or “right-to-work-for-less” states, depending on whose messaging you’re using). But workers in the trenches will tell you it essentially does the same thing.
“It gives corporations who are bad actors a second bite at the ‘not at my company’ anti-union apple,” said Liza Nielsen, a former Starbucks worker who experienced surveillance, harassment, and retaliation for her union activity. “Requiring a second election to even begin to discuss expense reimbursement for unions makes unionizing that much more of a long shot.”
And that strategy is working.
According to the Federal Reserve, states that bar union fee collection have union membership rates of around 6%. While states that allow negotiation for union fee collection have union membership rates of twice that, or around 13%.
According to The Economic Policy Institute, the phrase “right to work” itself is intended to deceive and confuse: “The misleadingly named policy is designed to make it more difficult for workers to form and sustain unions and negotiate collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.”
Which may explain why Colorado’s rate of union membership, with the bizarre two-election system, was 7.7% in 2024. Below the national average of 9.9, and far below the 13% average of non-right-to-work states.
In his state of the state address, Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) said he opposed efforts to make Colorado a “right-to-work” state. On Facebook, he says he’s pro-union.
In both places, in the very next breath, he talked about Colorado’s two-election system, using pure “right-to-work” arguments to explain why he opposes legislation, which cleared the Colorado Senate and is currently poised to pass the House, that would eliminate the second election.
In an interview on 9News this year, Polis explained that the second election was necessary to prevent a union from “deducting money from everyone’s paycheck.” Host Kyle Clark let the patently false and inflammatory statement go. In fact, all the second vote does is allow negotiation. With a second vote, no one would lose money from their paycheck.
Polis sat back, secure in the fact that he had made his opposition sound normal and fair.
But his Democratic colleagues were less than impressed.
U.S. Reps Diana DeGette and Brittany Pettersen wrote a public letter in March, urging passage of the bill, arguing, “Colorado’s current two-election requirement for union formation is burdensome and sets a higher bar for workers than for elected officials or ballot measures.”
Five former secretaries of Labor — from the Biden, Obama, and Clinton administrations — sent a letter to Polis in February asking him to remove this bar to unionization.
“The second election requirement … creates administrative red tape and delays that disproportionately disadvantage workers, suppressing Colorado’s unionization rate …” the letter stated.
Most recently, former FTC commissioner (appointed by Biden but removed by Trump) Alvaro Bedoya testified before the state Legislature’s Joint Judiciary Committee and urged passage of the law that would eliminate the second election requirement.
“My hope is … the governor signs it and brings Colorado to the same level of protection for its workers as the rest of the country,” Bedoya said.
A broad swath of mainstream news analysis blamed the November 2024 romp over Democratic candidates on the party’s loss of its previous pillar of support: the working class. Robert Reich, labor secretary under Clinton (and signatory of the previously mentioned letter to Polis) has commented frequently about this erosion, long before the most recent election. For more than three decades, he’s been arguing that the previous “middle class” — 75% of Americans — were becoming “the anxious class,” scrabbling to maintain their footholds and losing ground. It’s this segment of the population that found Trump’s “Make America Great Again” attractive.
