Ballot-Issues Deal Next Week, Salazar Says

By Joanne Kelley

Labor and business leaders met Friday evening to continue negotiations over several contentious issues on the November ballot, making progress on how they would work together but agreeing to wait until next week for any deal.

The two sides met at the Denver offices of Sen. Ken Salazar, who has been working with union leaders and business executives to come up with a way to defuse what could be a huge battle at the polls.

As Salazar arrived at his office on 15th Street, he told the Rocky he expected a formal agreement “by next week.” He declined to elaborate. “We’re working on it,” Salazar said.

The latest offer that sources say is on the table: businesses would kick in about $5 million to help fight three measures unions are trying to defeat:

* Amendment 47, the so- called right-to-work measure that would prohibit the current practice of requiring workers covered by collective bargaining contracts to pay at least some union dues.

* Amendment 49, which would bar governments in Colorado from deducting union dues – or money for other special interest groups – directly from workers’ paychecks.

* Amendment 54, which would ban sole-source government contractors from making political contributions.

In exchange, unions would pull four measures that businesses would otherwise have spent money fighting until Election Day on Nov. 4.

Those measures would make executives criminally liable for fraudulent activity they know about but fail to report, as well as ban the firing of workers without a specific reason. The measures also would require employers to pay 80 percent of employees’ health care premiums and allow injured workers to seek damages beyond workers compensation benefits.

Unions spent millions of dollars to get those measures on the ballot, mainly in the hope of using them as leverage to convince backers of the right-to- work amendment to withdraw their ballot proposal.

But right-to-work proponents have said they have no intention of backing down by an Oct. 2 deadline to withdraw.

While some business groups have endorsed the right-to- work measure, a number of business leaders associated with an alliance called Colorado Concern have become willing to defeat it as a way to preserve the current labor-business climate in the state.

The potential agreement under discussion between business and labor also would call for unions and businesses to mount a “no” campaign on the three anti-union measures.

Pat Hamill, president of Oakwood Homes and a board member of Colorado Concern, arrived at Salazar’s office wearing a green button indicating his positions: “No on 47, 49, 54.”

Among others at the Salazar meeting were Jim Carpenter, who is Gov. Bill Ritter’s chief of staff; Ernest Duran Jr., president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7; and Jess Knox, executive director of Protect Colorado’s Future, a labor-backed coalition.

Originally published by Joanne Kelley, Rocky Mountain News 03-954-5068 or RockyMountain News.com.

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