Labor issues big in Colorado elections

Labor issues, both pro- and anti-union, are on the ballot in Colorado this coming November, and promise to affect the outcome of both candidate races, as well as the issues themselves.

Big Labor has promised to pour $300 million into labor issues nationwide, and Colorado will certainly get its share. Right-to-work is on the ballot for the first time since 1958 in Colorado, and in retaliation, Labor put four issues on the ballot, pulling two at the last minute. The toughest one would make a business institute a union shop when a majority of employees sign cards requesting a union, without holding an election.

Democrat Mark Udall, running for the U.S. Senate seat of retiring GOP Sen. Wayne Allard, is a union favorite and has raised millions of dollars during his years in Congress, from Labor. His GOP opponent, former Rep. Bob Schaeffer, is no union fan and the unions will be eager to defeat him.

In 1958, for those too young to remember, Big Labor poured big money into the state, and for the first time in years, elected a Democratic Governor, U.S. Senator and majorities in both houses of the state legislature, as well as defeating the Right-to-work measure on the ballot.

Will 2008 be a repeat? In those days, unions represented about 40% of the state's workers, but only 8% today. Based on that statistic you wouldn't think so, but Colorado has moved to the left in recent years, and despite fewer members in the state, Big Labor money is still a force to be reckoned with.