Ryan Frazier puts his job on the line with Amendment 47

Comments (0) By Joel Warner Thursday, Oct 16 2008

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It was against this backdrop that Frazier and others decided something had to change. "I was having some conversations with a group of individuals about the recent labor situation in the state," he says. "We were seeing more and more of a growing trend by labor leaders to push the envelope and to make this state more unionized."

He won't name those colleagues, aside from Cole and Republican state senator Ted Harvey, who has tried several times to pass a right-to-work law. "Whether or not this state becomes more unionized, we thought workers should have the choice as to whether they wanted to unionize," Frazier continues. "So right-to-work was born." And when it came time to decide who would actually put their names on the initiative to put the matter on the November 2008 ballot, Frazier stepped forward: "Sign me up. The rest is history."

Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier has fans and foes.

Jess Knox, director of Protect Colorado's Future, is fighting Amendment 47.

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Cole is owner of the Golden consulting firm Cole Associates, which, according to its website, "has a superior track record in defeating union organizing attempts and in winning union elections."

"I've never heard him say one bad things about unions," Frazier says of Cole. "I don't believe he's motivated by spite or hatred for unions, but rather because he believes right-to-work is a good thing."

As for Jonathan Coors, an executive with Coors spinoff CoorsTek, which contributed $200,000 to the Amendment 47 campaign, Frazier says, "He and I are vastly different, but one thing we have in common, among others, is his commitment to freedom."

Cole and Coors have kept mum about their involvement, however, and didn't respond to requests for comment. But Jake Jabs has embraced the spotlight by running commercials for Amendment 47. At an October press conference, he told reporters he wanted "to frankly hurt the pocketbooks of the unions."

Frazier, though, insists that right-to-work isn't about busting unions. While many right-to-work supporters have focused on the idea that the legislation encourages business and job growth, for Frazier it's about freedom. "It's been over ten years now that I've been a supporter of right-to-work," he says. "If you want to join labor unions, I believe you have that right. But you should also have the right not to join unions or pay union dues."

To bolster his point, he mentions a friend and former union steward at a company where union dues were required, a guy who tells stories of workers not having enough money for both mandatory union payments and medicine for their sick kids.

Frazier notes that some strong Colorado unions are already voluntary, like the Colorado teachers' union, Aurora's plumbers' union, and even his critic Randy Rester's Aurora firefighters' union. "I believe that as long as a labor union is providing value, their members will continue to be part of that union," he says. "And they will pay their dues."

But Amendment 47's opponents argue that right-to-work isn't that simple. They say the evidence is far from conclusive that it spurs economic growth. "What I think it does do is reduce union density and create a climate of anti-union behavior," says Hogler. He points out that since all employees at a unionized workplace enjoy the benefits of the union, everyone should equally assume its cost — and that unions usually need the leverage of a unified, workplace-wide membership to win such benefits to begin with.

And in these tumultuous economic times, he adds, it hardly seems wise to be undermining anything that may help get us out of this mess. "What actually helped to prevent depressions and downtowns in the past were unions," he says. "A member could buy a house, he could have a fairly stable income and life, and those things were provided by unions. I don't think things that hurt unions are necessarily good for this country."

Not to mention that in Colorado, just 8.7 percent of workers are in a union, which is lower than the national average. Studies also show that most Colorado workers, when given a choice, don't seem to have a problem with obligatory dues. Between 1978 and 1998, workers voted to require compulsory dues in 234 out of 351 elections, meaning that each time, at least three-quarters of voters were for it.

To Amendment 47 opponents, the evidence is clear. They see this measure, along with two others on the ballot — Amendment 49, which would ban automatic payroll deduction for union dues, and Amendment 54, which would prohibit unions and contractors with no-bid government contracts from making political contributions — as a concerted effort to obliterate unions by a small group of conservative business interests. And Frazier, they say, is just an opportunistic politician.

"This is an ideological crusade," says Jess Knox, executive director of Protect Colorado's Future, a union coalition that's fighting Amendment 47. "Frazier, in my opinion, is trying to jump from Single A to the major leagues in one fell swoop."

But there's no clear proof that Frazier is backing right-to-work for political gamesmanship. Maybe, just maybe, this guy actually believes in it. After all, if he's aiming for the big leagues, he picked a tough way to get there. As American Furniture Warehouse's Zuppa puts it, "The five-dollar-book on how to be a politician in 2008 says that if you want to be successful and win elections, don't take stances on anything controversial."