PEF helps bring unionism to Colorado
By DEBORAH A. MILES
Mobilizing PEF members to fight for better contracts or government
accountability is one thing. Going to Colorado to inform and educate state
workers about the benefits of joining a stronger union is something else.
State workers in Colorado are represented by CAPE-SEIU (Colorado Association of
Public Employees-Service Employees International Union), AFT (American
Federation of Teachers), and AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees.) Their goal was to merge the three and form ColoradoWINS.
And it happened.
On June 11, more than 22,000 Colorado state employees voted yes to
representation by ColoradoWINS. In August, an additional 11,000 state employees
in financial and professional services bargaining units cast their ballots in
favor of the new union.
“This was an effort to get more than 30,000 state employees from seven different
bargaining units to come together,” said PEF organizer Blair Burroughs who spent
two weeks in the Denver area in May working with others on this campaign.
The effort was organized and financed by PEF’s affiliates after Colorado Gov.
Bill Ritter signed an executive order last November to establish recognition of
state employee unions. The order also allows for a non-binding form of
collective bargaining.
Besides Burroughs, PEF Executive Board member Karl Berger (a citizen
participation specialist 2 at the state Department of Environmental
Conservation) and retiree Lucretia Buccolo volunteered to work two weeks in June
on the ColoradoWINS campaign.
“I talked to Colorado state workers about the value of being a union member in
New York and our benefits,” Berger said. “A lot of it was all new to them. They
had some small organizations, but nothing really effective. I talked about
better health care and plans for reasonable rates, more accountability in our
salary structure and contracting-out which is a major concern for them. I told
them about PEF’s Go Public campaign and how it
resulted in laws that create government transparency and accountability.”
“I spent the better part of two weeks talking to state workers, calling and
visiting them at home,” Berger said.
Buccolo, a retired educational supervisor from Oneida Correctional Facility in
Rome, NY, said her task was to talk to educators who worked in Colorado prisons.
She found the system there to be quite different than New York’s.
“All of the prisons, including four federal prisons, are housed in an area
called Canon City. A person is allowed access to the prisons only once every 30
days, so I spent a good deal of time knocking on doors to talk to prison
employees at their homes.
“Colorado is a conservative state and many of the people I spoke to already had
their minds made up whether to vote for a union or not. My role was to sell the
concept of unions,” Buccolo said.
Buccolo, Berger and Burroughs were among the dozens of other volunteers who made
a difference.
“The victory is a major accomplishment,” Berger said. “It also shows the
strength in mobilization and solidarity.
