The Problem Ritter Created

By Jessica Peck Corry, 4-03-08

Governor Bill Ritter wants you to believe that he’s working to end a duel between Colorado’s union bosses and business leaders. He says he wants to prevent a November ballot battle that could see their competing initiatives put before voters. The only problem: Ritter is the source of the rift.

On Tuesday, Ritter called on the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 7 to withdraw five ballot initiatives it filed Monday that would impose significant constraints on Colorado employers. Likewise, Ritter also called on business leaders to deny support to a “Right to Work” initiative that would prohibit unions from mandating that employees join a union or pay dues for union representation.

To The Denver Post, Ritter’s spokesman Evan Dryer said Tuesday: “The governor believes the best thing for all of Colorado would be if none of these measures were on the ballot in November. [Ritter] has had conversations with both sides and will continue trying to bring everyone together and find common ground to get to a place that’s good for the entire state.”

Of course he does. A battle over labor issues could cost Ritter and the Democratic Party serious political capital. And with national Democrats coming to Denver this August for their national convention, the last thing Ritter needs is an extremist union agenda to impede his party’s effort to appeal to moderate small- and medium-sized business owners.

Of the five ballot measures the union filed with the secretary of state Monday, the most egregious is one that would require employers to give workers cost-of-living raises regardless of outside economic factors. Another one-size-fits-all measure would require businesses with 20 or more employees to provide health insurance-regardless of whether the employee wants it or could get it elsewhere, such as from a parent or spouse’s plan.

The measures come as the U.S. economy continues to shed jobs, with more than 100,000 jobs lost in the last quarter alone. And as too many Colorado employers stand on the brink of bankruptcy, doing everything possible to avoid more layoffs, Local 7’s efforts will only help ensure their demise by considerably raising the costs of doing business.

Ritter is stepping in now, before any of the union’s five initiatives or the right-to-work effort has successfully navigated the approval process, including gathering the more than 76,000 voter signatures required.

My, how times have changed. It’s hard to believe that just five months ago, it was Ritter who secretly met with union bosses to design an executive order that could now impose collective bargaining, conveniently called “employee partnerships,” on unwilling state employees. His tactics were enough for the Denver Post to opine on its front page in an editorial comparing Ritter to famed mobster Jimmy Hoffa. As the Post concluded, “His promise to usher in a new era of collaborative government - where business and labor, Democrats and Republicans, would all be at the table - was nothing more than a sham.” It remains a sham.

If Ritter has his way, his November executive order - and the political damage resulting from it - will all just be a distant memory. He’s a uniter - not a divider. But his goal of having business and labor leaders drop their initiatives will remain a fantasy - especially as long as he remains at the helm of state government. There simply is no fair middle ground, especially given the questionable intentions of Local 7’s latest efforts.

Local 7’s ballot initiatives - grossly out of touch with the basic market realities of the 21st Century and the less than 8 percent of workers who are unionized in Colorado - are indicative of a larger labor movement out of touch with ways to create sustainable job growth in a global economy.

Assuming Ritter fails in his effort to have the dueling initiatives withdrawn, I look forward to a Democratic National Convention this summer where voters from around the country can hear loud and clear the extremist agenda of unions out of touch with the increasingly innovative economies of the western U.S. Maybe then, Ritter will become embarrassed enough to start acting like the business-friendly governor he once pledged to be.

Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.