According to Brian Winkler, organizer and executive vice president of the Communications Workers of America Local 7777, 2024 was by far the busiest year in his twelve years of organizing. Since 2016, the CWA chapter Winkler works for in Denver has seen annual rises in organizing leads, which represent workers who are interested in possibly unionizing their workplaces. Over the past five years, those leads have quadrupled.
Winkler says that worsening material conditions and increasing income inequality for younger generations have caused more Millennials and Gen Z workers to want to reclaim power through unionizing. “They're not being paid well and they can't pay their bills, and they're living in abject poverty because of it and still working multiple jobs to do so,” Winkler says. “This younger generation, I think, is organizing out of necessity.”
Young people who try to unionize their workplaces are realizing that the path to improving their lives is to have more control over their work, he adds.
A similar phenomenon is driving tenant unionization, says Eida Altman, organizing director of Denver Metro Tenants Union. “We're still getting more calls than we know what to do with, just because the conditions that people are living in are deteriorating while rents go up,” Altman says. “Rents are higher, conditions are worse.”
DMTU is involved with around 900 households right now. According to Altman, DMTU has seen a rise in out-of-state investors as well as large, private-equity landlords that are unconcerned with the lives of tenants. Those tenants are now reaching out to DMTU for help.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 7 also helped plenty of workers this past year, including employees of Casa Bonita. Entertainment workers at the pink palace unanimously voted to unionize in November; the cliff divers, actors, puppeteers and magicians who work at Casa Bonita want better wages, safety measures and communication from their employers. Now that they won their election, they’ll start bargaining to reach those goals.
Casa Bonita turned fifty earlier this year as entertainment workers there voted for a union.
Molly Martin
Two Colorado Alamo Drafthouse locations, the Sloan’s Lake and Westminster spots, successfully voted for unions in 2024; action is pending at the Littleton location. The employees say they were inspired to start the effort after seeing how much their company earned when Barbenheimer swept the nation in 2023.
Employees at several private preschools, the Mercury Cafe and the Denver Art Museum also launched unionization efforts in 2024.
In 2025, they could be joined by city employees who can collectively bargain now, after nearly 65 percent of the voters approved a ballot measure in November giving all workers employed by the City of Denver the same rights to organize that police and firefighters have had for decades.
And tenants made their mark, too, unionizing to fight landlords they see as negligent while pushing the city and state for stronger enforcement of laws meant to protect renters. One union drive, at the Felix apartments in southeast Denver, started with tenants pushing their landlord to fix persistent problems that left them without hot water and ended by grabbing the attention of the mayor of Denver.
In Mike Johnston’s response to the city council's proposed amendments to his budget, he allocated $400,000 for two new employees for the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment.
“This will support DDPHE’s goals of taking earlier enforcement action when violations of the housing code are documented, increasing engagement with tenants’ unions, and meeting ongoing needs for data analysis, public data sharing, and open-records requests,” Johnston explained.
Altman says that tenant unions getting a shoutout from the mayor wasn’t on the 2024 bingo card for organizers, but DMTU is thrilled with the recognition.
Even as unions gain ground locally, Winkler warns that 2025 could see rollbacks of union rights after Donald Trump takes office. Under President Joe Biden, labor laws were strong; his administration ushered in rules that required companies to recognize unions if an employer committed an unfair labor practice during a unionization process. Now, Winkler says, the CWA is preparing to see that law go away. But the organization plans to fight on.
“Workplace democracy is key, I believe, to healthy living, to have some control over how you survive,” Winkler says. “If we're going to talk about democracy, it needs to go down to the shop floor, to where we are all making a living and trying to scrape by. We're seeing a bit of a turn to that. It just needs to accelerate more and more — and I think it will.”
