What’s Working: Why unionizing in Colorado, a modified-right-to-work state, sees limited success – By Tamara Chuang and Parker Yamasaki (Colorado Sun) / March 9, 2024
The Colorado Labor Peace Act, premajorities, farm workers and more come into play when tracking union formation. Plus: Who else is unionizing in Colorado?
It’s been a couple of frenetic years for workers whose casual conversations with colleagues turned into full-on union organization since early 2020. Some workers have been fired. Others abandoned the effort. A small minority have seen success. But for the most part, unions coexist with Colorado’s status as a right-to-work state.
As reported in a Colorado Sun story earlier this week, most of 143 Colorado petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board since early 2020 didn’t make it past the first union-formation vote. An even smaller number failed to attempt a Colorado Labor Peace Act election, which is needed to bypass right-to-work employment policies. Only a small handful have a contract.
To unionize, though, workers don’t have to petition the federal agency. An employer can voluntarily recognize the staff as a bargaining unit, as was the case for artists at Meow Wolf Denver. Or workers can take the premajority route, which lacks collective bargaining rights, but still creates an infrastructure under which to organize. Agriculture workers aren’t allowed to unionize at the federal level, but a Colorado law granted farm workers and the cannabis agriculture workers the right in 2021.
CONTINUE > https://coloradosun.com/2024/03/09/union-colorado-right-to-work-state/
