The word at the Capitol is that this year’s attempt to deny workers a vote on paying union dues is dead on arrival when it reaches the desk of Gov. Jared Polis. Same as last year. 

Let’s hope so.

It would be great news not only for Colorado’s economy and its ebbing ability to attract investment in new jobs — but also for our state’s workers. 

Those workers already have the right under federal law to vote on unionizing their workplace. That’s not in question. What’s at stake here is a push by power-hungry organized labor and its minions in the legislature to kill a long-standing state law assuring employees at a newly unionized workplace a separate, second vote on whether they all have to pay union dues.

Respecting the right of workers to opt out of hefty union dues — if they don’t want to join the union in the first place — seems like a no-brainer. Yet, House Bill 26-1005 — sponsored by state Reps. Javier Mabrey, D-Denver, and Jennifer Bacon, D-Denver, as well as state Sens. Jessie Danielson, D-Wheat Ridge, and Iman Jodeh, D-Aurora — would stomp on that right.

Big Labor has it pretty good in our state as it is.

Even under Colorado law, unions can force all employees in a workplace to fork over dues once a majority votes to unionize — so long as an additional election is held, and 75% agree to the mandatory payroll deduction. That second vote is only fair and is guaranteed by the state’s 80-year-old Labor Peace Act. HB 1005 would strike it from statute books.

Evidently, it’s too great a restraint on a money-hungry union movement that wants to wring as much dues out of as many workers as it can. So, year after year, Big Labor’s lobby has leaned on its legislative sympathizers to draft bills to upend the compromise represented by the Labor Peace Act. Like last year, ruling Democrats again have obliged with such a bill.

As our news affiliate Colorado Politics reported, the prospects of the latest legislation appear dim. It’s essentially the same as last year’s, which was nixed by Polis’ veto pen.

“At its core, this is about who has a say in whether union dues are deducted from employee paychecks,” he wrote in last year’s official veto statement. “Mandatory dues deduction should require a high bar of both participation and support, particularly at a time when hardworking Coloradans are concerned about the cost of groceries, the economy, and their job security.”

Well put. We’d add that expanding a union’s chokehold on Colorado workplaces not only cancels worker choice but also stands to kill job creation. 

With Colorado’s ability to draw job-creating business investment in doubt right now — amid our state’s high cost of living and suffocating regulatory climate — the last thing we need is a surrender to Big Labor that is sure to send prospective employers to other states. A study by Colorado’s Common Sense Institute found that half of major employers’ CEOs consider a state’s union-organizing laws when deciding on expanding or investing in that state. 

Organized labor’s efforts long ago to improve pay, benefits and working conditions in factories and mines are bygone laurels. Since then, union bosses’ lavish salaries, heavy-handed tactics and political playmaking have left the rank and file disillusioned and led to declining union membership. Workers no longer can identify with the unions that purport to represent.

Polis — a Democrat who’s ever the political maverick and never a pawn of his party’s labor wing — should have no problem once again thwarting the cynical ambitions of Big Labor. He’d be doing the state’s workers a big favor.