Liza Nielsen applied to work at Starbucks because of the “promised magical benefits” the company offered, like tuition and health care reimbursement. But when she started at the coffee giant’s Superior store in early 2021, her expectations curdled. She and her coworkers were consistently shorthanded, she said, and they had to fight for enough shifts to unlock the benefits that had attracted Nielsen to the job in the first place. “It was a workplace built for burnout,” she said. Nielsen and her coworkers organized to form a union, part of a growing and national wave of worker organizing at Starbucks. Amid anti-union tactics that federal labor regulators found ran afoul of federal law, Nielsen and her coworkers successfully formed a union with 99% of staff voting in support, she said. The group has since joined with other Starbucks workers in a national effort to craft a first union contract. That process is still underway. But when it’s done, Nielsen said, unionized Starbucks employees in Colorado — like thousands of organized workers before them — will be alone in the United States in having to pass a second election before they can advance a key piece of their prospective contract: membership in the union and the collection of dues and fees. Nielsen, who left Starbucks and is now a full-time labor organizer, said trying to pass another election after the uphill climb of winning the first — with a higher threshold this time around — is “extremely anxiety-inducing and just feels super unfair.” In one of the most contentious fights of the legislative session, a group of Democratic state lawmakers is trying to do away with that second election, striking it from an 81-year-old state law. Senate Bill 5 would eliminate a unique provision of Colorado law that has left the state with one foot in anti-union waters that are more common in conservative “right-to-work” states. The proposal has the backing of a swath of labor unions and Democratic legislators, who argue that the second election is unnecessary and outdated. They contend that putting an additional obstacle between workers and negotiating — and between unions and the dues that support their work — primarily serves to undercut organizing, while giving companies another chance to launch anti-union campaigns. “There’s no defensible reason to have the second election, except to throw up these barriers and make it really difficult for people to follow through with their own choice to form a union,” said Sen. Jessie Danielson, a Wheat Ridge Democrat and one of the bill’s primary sponsors. The measure is also backed by Reps. Javier Mabrey and Jennifer Bacon and Sen. Robert Rodriguez, all of whom are Denver Democrats. But critics — who include much of the business community and, more crucially, Gov. Jared Polis — argue that the bill upends decades of labor law in Colorado. It’s a status quo that they consider a compromise between workers and employers. They counter that Colorado’s labor laws make the state more attractive for businesses looking to move or expand, and they say that changing those laws will hamper the state’s already-lagging competitiveness. “We feel very strongly that the compromise has served us well,” J.J. Ament, the president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, said of the second-election provision. “The economic data has shown that it’s served us well. Job growth in Colorado outperforms both fully right-to-work states and fully union-shop states.” Loren Furman, the president and CEO of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, said the state’s regulatory environment has become more burdensome for business. She shares Ament’s fear that changing the law may make Colorado even less attractive to companies. Union supporter Pete DeMay of Chicago chants into a bullhorn along with other picketers during a labor organizing action at the Starbucks location at 2975 E. Colfax Ave. in Denver on Friday, March 11, 2022. (Photo by Eric Lutzens/The Denver Post) Polis, a Democrat who vetoed labor bills in May, has told lawmakers that he intends to veto this bill, too. In a statement to The Denver Post on Wednesday, Polis spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said the governor wanted to see the labor and business groups negotiate further, but Polis “remains skeptical of eliminating the second election.” The bill passed its first vote, in front of a Senate committee, on Tuesday. It’s now one committee vote away from the Senate floor. Should it pass both votes there next month, it’ll move to the House and restart the process. Business and union leaders met Wednesday, and Furman said it was a good discussion. She declined to talk about a possible compromise but said business advocates were willing to explore lowering any administrative barriers to forming unions. However, Furman is leery of legislation she considers “a monumental change to a law” that’s been in place for decades. “It’s the kind of legislation that takes time to talk about,” she said. “This is not simple.” Union members erupt in applause following a speech that criticized Gov. Jared Polis for “not caring about workers,” in Denver on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Zachary Spindler-Krage/The Denver Post) Peace and labor In 1943, eight years after the National Labor Relations Act enshrined union protections in federal law, the Colorado legislature overwhelmingly passed the Labor Peace Act. The federal law requires a majority of a company’s workers to vote in favor of a union before that union can represent them. The Colorado statute added the second election: It requires workers to pass another vote, with up to 75% support needed, before those workers can begin negotiating a provision in union contracts known as the union-security clause. In essence, the union-security clause describes union membership and the collection of union dues, paid by members, or representation fees, paid by non-member workers who are covered by the union’s contracts and represented by it in disputes. Those clauses are typical in union contracts, which are negotiated between the company and its workers, and contracts are approved by a majority vote of union members. Removing the second election from the Labor Peace Act, as Democratic lawmakers are seeking to do, would not mean that all workers at unionized companies must join the union and pay dues. That provision must still be negotiated and sought by workers, and the process begins after the second election is successful. If unions fail to pass the second election, they cannot negotiate membership and the subsequent collection of dues and fees, and such participation becomes fully voluntary, as it is in states with so-called right-to-work laws. Supporters of the Labor Peace Act say the second election acts as another check to ensure that a supermajority of workers support paying union dues and fees. But Democratic lawmakers and union officials say it’s intended to financially undercut unions, divide organized workers and impede organizing generally. Data from the Service Employees International Union show that 68% of 553 Colorado unions that pursued a second election since 1977 successfully passed it. In 126 of the unsuccessful cases, a majority of workers voted in favor but support fell short of the 75% threshold, according to a report issued by the left-leaning Colorado Fiscal Institute. Business groups and Polis have described the Labor Peace Act as a compromise between labor and business. They’ve argued against requiring workers to pay dues and said Democratic lawmakers’ measure would upend decades of literal labor peace. Some business groups — like the Colorado and Denver metro chambers of commerce — have pointed to their opposition to past anti-union ballot measures as evidence of their commitment to the Labor Peace Act’s status quo. The Denver chamber “went to bat with our political clout, with our financial resources, with our networks to defend the very compromise that we are defending today,” said Ament, the group’s president and CEO. “The only difference is, the attack on the compromise today is not coming from the right-to-work side. It’s coming from the organized labor side.” What do Coloradans and workers want? Opponents of the legislation also point to recent polling conducted by business groups that showed broad opposition among voters to changing Colorado’s labor laws. Critics have derided that poll as presenting voters with a slanted view of the bill and inaccurately linking the elimination of the second election with requiring workers to pay union dues. Furman and Ament called the language of the poll questions straightforward and fair. The poll found that 64% of the 507 respondents had a favorable view of unions, while 70% opposed changing the law. The poll, conducted Jan. 6-8, had a margin of error of 4.4%. “To me that gives the poll credibility, that they’re not anti-labor,” Ament said of respondents. The point, Ament added, is that without the second election, it would take support from just 50% plus one of those who voted to obligate all employees to pay dues or fees. If the second vote fails, it doesn’t mean the union goes away, he said. But supporters of Senate Bill 5 argue that the second election hasn’t worked for unions, and they note that workers decide whether to include dues collections in their contracts, which must be approved by a majority of workers before they go into effect. Fewer than 7% of Colorado workers are union members, according to federal statistics — well below the national average of 10% and closer to the levels of membership in anti-union states. Supporters have pointed to research showing that union members earn 10% more than their non-union peers. And they’ve charged, with a pointed look in Polis’ and Democrats’ direction, that the party should be focused on boosting workers’ wages. “In this state, 6.9% of workers are unionized. So has (the compromise) worked or hasn’t it worked? That’s a matter of interpretation,” Fred Redmond, the secretary-treasurer of the national AFL-CIO, told The Post. Indeed, the passage of the Labor Peace Act more than 81 years ago was not the result of a grand bargain between unions and businesses, said James Walsh, a University of Colorado Denver political science professor who specializes in labor history. Rather, he argued, it was backed by businesses and anti-union organizations, including the racist Christian American Association, as an intentional impediment to union organizing. “If you look at the notes from the Colorado State Federation of Labor after this was rammed through, you’ll see that the labor community was vehemently opposed to it,” Walsh said. “I think we have to set the record straight: This was not a grand compromise. This was forced on the labor community.” Paul López, Denver’s clerk and recorder, right, turned out to show his support for local janitors as they take part in a Service Employees International Union rally at 17th and California streets in downtown Denver, on July 23, 2024. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post) Will negotiations bear fruit? The bill has started winding through the Capitol, and supporters hope to have it in front of the full Senate in the coming weeks. Wieman, Polis’ spokeswoman, said in last week’s statement that the governor “remains open to a solution that maintains a free and fair second election, and he is encouraging labor and business to try to find a stable negotiated compromise if they want to replace the current compromise.” Wieman did not address a Post question about what specific compromise Polis seeks or if he’s been involved in any negotiations. Thus far, no such deal has been reached, and the bill’s backers, including Danielson, said no alternatives have been brought forward. Union representatives have chafed at how business groups and Polis have characterized the bill — as forcing workers to pay dues — and lawmakers say they have not yet received any proposals to amend it. While lawmakers and union officials say they are open to negotiations and ideas, their fundamental goal is consistent: They want the second election gone. Ament, of the Denver chamber, said opponents want to keep the second election in place and they don’t want to lower the threshold to pass the election. Business groups are willing to look at streamlining vote-counting, he said, and to examine other differences between state and federal law. “I’m not sure we would be persuaded to go farther,” he said. That puts the bill on an apparent collision course with Polis’ veto pen. 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With its first committee vote behind it, the bill is now one step removed from the full Senate. That floor vote is likely to come in early February. Sixteen Democratic senators — nearly the number of votes needed to pass the chamber — have already signed on to co-sponsor the bill, and supporters are confident the measure will pass the chamber. Thirty-two House members have also already signed on in support, one shy of the total needed in that chamber to send it to Polis. Should the bill reach his desk and Polis make good on his threat to reject it, his veto likely won’t end the debate. The bill’s proponents have said they would bring it back again, and they’ve pitched it as a referendum on Democrats’ backing for organized labor and, they argue, for working Coloradans. When the bill was unveiled in November, the state party’s chairman was present. So, too, were Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat who’s already announced his bid to succeed Polis in 2026, and Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who’s also a rumored gubernatorial candidate. Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.