When Will Blue States Embrace Unions?

If you are a blue state and you don’t embrace unions, you are a short-sighted idiot. No one is going to do more to entrench Democratic power than the labor movement. Yet for different reasons, states that are relatively new to the Democratic side such as Virginia and Colorado have not done the work to embrace unions and encourage them to grow. Virginia Democrats may have learned their lesson on this when Youngkin won in 2019; we will see this fall. As for Colorado, a lot of it comes out of the libertarian culture of the place that very much has influenced the left there. After all, hippies moved there to be left alone, not to engage in collective action to create economic rights for all. Jared Polis is definitely of that ilk and when he’s not fluffing RFK Jr over vaccines and “health,” he’s real squishy on economic issues, though good on social issues. He’s a rich guy after all.

Colorado is also a special case. It has an old anti-union law on the book that makes it almost impossible to organize there. Democrats are finally getting around to moving against it. Let’s explore:

One of the headline bills of Colorado’s 2025 legislative session would rewrite the state’s 80-year-old rule on labor organizing, making it easier for unions to require that all employees at a company pay fees for collective bargaining representation, regardless of whether they are members of the union.

Right now, it takes a simple majority vote for workers to form a union. But achieving so-called union security, where all employees at a company are required to pay for representation, is a much taller task. 

The Colorado Labor Peace Act requires a 75% vote of approval before a union can even negotiate with an employer over imposing union security.

Senate Bill 5 would remove the union security vote requirement altogether.

Senate Bill 5 likely has enough Democratic support to pass the state legislature, but Gov. Jared Polis has indicated he won’t sign it into law as is. And the Colorado business community is pushing back on the proposal, too. 

Here’s an explanation of the history of the Labor Peace Act, what exactly it does and the political hurdles facing Senate Bill 5 at the Capitol this year.

Of course Jared Polis sucks.

And then there’s Colorado. It’s known as a modified right-to-work state.

That means unions can gain the power to collect fees from everyone in a workplace, but they face more barriers to getting that power than in a non-right-to-work state because of the union security vote requirement under the Labor Peace Act.

Once workers form a union through a simple majority vote, their powers are pretty limited. They can appoint shop stewards and try to get the employer to bargain with them, but they don’t have the resources or power to really fight hard for things like better wages and benefits.

Unions say they need union security fees to fund collective bargaining. 

Unions are required to bargain on behalf of all workers at a company, whether they are in the union or not. That’s why they feel it’s only fair that union security be imposed to cover the cost of things like lawyers and negotiating experts.

To be clear, union fees and union dues are two different things. 

Workers cannot be forced to join a union, and only members of the union pay dues. That money can go toward things like political activities, whereas representation fees paid through union security can only go toward collective bargaining.

The Colorado Sun analyzed union security votes in Colorado in recent decades, finding they fail nearly half the time. That said, unions have had more success as of late. Of the 25 union security votes taken in Colorado since early 2020, 16 have passed.

The vote can also take some time to happen. 

The union security elections are run by the state Department of Labor and sometimes the state isn’t so fast. That can drag out the unionization process, during which the makeup of the workplace can shift and momentum can slow. And employers can do more to pressure workers to change their minds about unionizing.

“This is about making sure workers have a voice. It’s about ensuring that we have the power to advocate for ourselves. It’s about making sure that when we stand together, we can improve our communities,” Liza Nielsen, a former Starbucks worker who tried to unionize her store, testified at the Capitol.

But then Jared Polis would probably jump at a chance to work for Trump…..

Colorado needs to keep working to elect real Democrats who actually believe in values of justice. Jared Polis is not one of those. He’s just a modified Republican.