A Matter of Principle
BARNES, FRED
A Matter of Principle Colorado’s right-to-work law champion. BY FRED BARNES Jonathan Coors was outnumbered when he met with Colorado governor Bill Ritter Jr. last April. Ritter wasn’t alone in...
...The last state to pass a right-to-work referendum was Oklahoma...
...BY FRED BARNES Jonathan Coors was outnumbered when he met with Colorado governor Bill Ritter Jr...
...Labor, of course, regards right-towork laws as practically a death sentence on the prospects for organizing workers...
...Despite his last name, Jonathan Coors is not a political powerhouse in Colorado...
...But its offi cials are skeptical of the chances of passing a referendum, and they fear a defeat would take right-towork off the table for decades...
...He believes a worker’s right to refuse to join a union or pay union dues is not negotiable...
...Organized labor is expected to spend millions to make sure Amendment 47 fails and that as many as four unionbacked ballot initiatives pass, including one requiring businesses with 20 or more employees to provide health insurance and another making it harder to fi re employees...
...Ritter has said that having right-towork and labor amendments on the ballot will create “mutually assured destruction” between business and labor...
...He spent 2004 and 2005 working on the advance team of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger...
...In 2006, when Republicans controlled the legislature, they came within a single vote in the state senate of passing a rightto- work law that Republican governor Bill Owens was ready to sign...
...There will be plenty in Colorado...
...The bill Ritter vetoed in 2007 would have killed the secondvote requirement...
...John Coors and the Coors family bought out shareholders in 2003 and took CoorsTek private...
...His position is “philosophical,” he explains, a matter of principle, not politics...
...The Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry favors the amendment, but the infl uential Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce doesn’t...
...Not so, Coors says mildly, “I do this out of a passion for moving Colorado forward...
...A year earlier, the Democratcontrolled legislature had passed a bill gutting the 1943 act...
...That’s an illusory number, however, because it’s all downhill from here...
...The amendment has the backing of the National Right to Work committee...
...Business critics of Amendment 47 insist the Labor Peace Act, which they regard as a modifi ed right-towork law, has worked fi ne...
...Besides that, Ritter promised to protect the state’s venerable Labor Peace Act, which makes union organizing diffi cult...
...Nor does Coors Brewing, whose former president Leo Kiely wrote a newspaper article attacking it...
...Coors, 28, is undeterred...
...Ritter had vetoed the bill...
...Coors—yes, he’s a member of the beer family—declined the offer...
...He denies it...
...It passed in 2001 with strong support from then-Governor Frank Keating and a majority of state legislators...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Ritter, too, is a Democrat...
...He left, a friend told the Denver Post, after concluding the governor is a pragmatist and not a principled politician...
...His opponents suspect Coors has a not-so-hidden agenda of impeding the union movement...
...He is the son of John Coors, who left the brewery in 1992 and joined Coors- Tek, which makes ceramic and plastic products and had once been part of the Adolph Coors Company...
...He and his allies had little trouble getting enough signatures on a petition to get right-to-work on the ballot...
...Its offi cial name is Amendment 47...
...Every now and then, you have to take a stand for something,” he says...
...Colorado business leaders are divided...
...Only 8 percent of the workforce is unionized, and Colorado rose to sixth place this year in the Forbes ranking of the “best states for business...
...Since then, he’s studied at the University of Denver and will receive an MBA this summer...
...Twenty-two states have such laws, including all the states in the South, Texas, and Florida...
...At least one private poll shows the measure with better than 70 percent support...
...The governor’s secretary of labor and chief of staff were there, along with several business leaders opposed to the effort by Coors to put a right-to-work referendum on the ballot this fall...
...The act requires an onerous second vote of 75 percent to create a “union shop” in which all workers must join the union or at least pay dues...
...How do you negotiate a philosophical debate...
...The natural evolution in the case of ballot initiatives is this: Though they often start out on top, voters fi nd it easier to vote against than for them, particularly when there’s strong and noisy opposition to the measure...
...That level of political support is absent in Colorado...
...Now Democrats run the legislature...
...Instead, they believe the most fruitful route to passage is through state legislatures...
...Ritter was eager to make a deal...
...But winning a majority won’t be easy...
...Ritter wasn’t alone in his offi ce...
...If Coors would abandon his referendum, the governor would persuade labor leaders to drop their plans for ballot initiatives regarded as detrimental by the business community...
...Coors asks, rhetorically...
Vol. 13 • August 2008 • No. 45
