Face the State

Face the State Staff Editorial

Figuring out how to keep union leaders happy has become a full-time job for Gov. Bill Ritter. After vetoing an effort to turn Colorado into a closed-shop union state, he has struggled continuously to keep organized labor satisfied without alienating Colorado's mainstream voters and business leaders. Tired of facing the perception that he would bow to Big Labor’s harmful economic agenda, the Democratic governor found a way to appease the giant while attracting little attention. Unfortunately, it came at the expense of good government.

Two weeks ago, Ritter signed an executive order allowing union leaders to tap into the state’s payroll system in order collect money for union dues and political contributions. He put state government back in the business of providing free service to an organization that represents a political interest dedicated to bigger, not more efficient, government. Thus, Ritter has decided to give public employee unions carte blanche to take money from hardworking public employees. Meanwhile, taxpayers and many state employees are being left with the scraps.

The trouble started before the Governor had time to finish decorating his new office. House Bill 1072 fell into his lap. The legislation jeopardized the state’s peaceful balance between business and labor, putting individual workers at greater risk of paying fees to a union against their will.

The Governor’s office told us that bill was no big deal, that there should have been no reason for surprise. Ritter had promised during the campaign to support the proposal, even if the promise was made to a select group of union leaders and hidden from voters.

Business leaders and Chambers of Commerce who had supported Ritter’s candidacy said that his signature on the bill would fracture the coalition to increase government spending on education and health care. So he deftly wielded the veto pen, claiming he still liked the idea but not the partisan tone of the debate that brought the legislation to his desk.

Furious at the perceived betrayal, AFL-CIO officials sent the Governor a scathing letter saying they would use all their influence to urge the removal of the 2008 Democratic National Convention from Denver. A few days later, Ritter made the gesture of good will to labor leaders by giving them the state’s payroll system as a convenient means of collecting cash.

Ritter’s executive order rescinds a 2001 order by his Republican predecessor Bill Owens. Owens signed his order saying that the state should not be in the business of processing financial transactions that are not required by law. When state employees learned they had a choice to pay union dues, two-thirds of them decided the membership fees weren’t worth it.

In signing the order, he claimed to merely increase "efficiency." The "efficiency" means that union leaders now have the opportunity to use their newfound "efficiency" to take members' money easily and quickly. Most dangerous is the ability and willingness of public employee union bosses to extract money from members and turn it to political uses.

Under current law, union bosses can take member money and transfer it into a political or small donor committee, without the permission or even knowledge or a member. It won't come as a surprise that employees rarely know their rights, and often fail to jump through the hoops necessary to keep their money. Indeed, union leadership does not publicize the withdrawal as political payments, and most employees don't even know that they are supporting the union's political agenda.

The employees themselves haven’t been knocking down the doors to have union dues deducted from their paychecks. Labor organizers and officials are the ones who stand to benefit. A Clinton cabinet official understood the principle. “In order to maintain themselves, unions have got to have some ability to strap their members to the mast,” said former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

When Governor Bill Owens stopped the automatic transfers, union member dues plummeted. Once Ritter reinstitutes the automatic transfers, Colorado's powerful public employee unions will have even more power to take member dues and use them for the union leaders political agenda. Observers expect public employee unions to shovel millions into future political campaigns.