DENVER—Weeks of late-night negotiations between business groups and unions over labor proposals headed to Colorado ballots this fall may not have been too urgent after all.
A poll released Friday showed only lukewarm support among Colorado voters for any of the labor measures, including just 39 percent saying they’d vote for a right-to-work amendment unions say would make it harder for workers to bargain.
The telephone poll of 501 registered voters, conducted Sept. 19-23, showed slightly more people, 40 percent, planned to vote against the right-to-work amendment that would bar unions from requiring nonunion workers to pay dues.
The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
That right-to-work amendment had union groups so worried they placed four pro-labor measures on ballots in response. The resulting stalemate lasted until Thursday, when the labor groups agreed to withdraw their amendments in exchange for $3 million from some other business groups to help fight the right-to-work measure.
“They might have been a little more worried than they needed to be,” chuckled pollster Floyd Ciruli, who oversaw the poll conducted for a a pro-business group of economic development officials.
Voters didn’t warm to many of the labor measures. Just as a minority planned to vote for the right-to-work measure, a minority was also interested in backing a pro-union measure to require just cause before a firing (though the just-cause amendment was among those unions agreed to drop after the poll was taken).
The poll showed a near-tossup on a proposal by Gov. Bill Ritter to do eliminate a tax credit for oil and gas companies, with 51 percent in favor, 25 percent against and the rest unsure or not planning to vote.
Ciruli said he suspects the long list of complicated amendments themselves may be to blame for the lukewarm reception from voters. The labor measures are hard to keep straight, and they’re competing with hot presidential and Senate races for the public’s attention.
“Because of the sheer volume of the issues, many people just have not tuned in” to the ballot measures, Ciruli said.
The poll did not ask voters about two of the most high-profile social questions on ballots: whether to bar affirmative action in state decisions and the nation’s first ballot question asking voters when life begins, an amendment proponents hope could lead to banning abortion.
Despite tepid support for many of the labor questions, especially the results showing right-to-work might be headed toward failure, union groups said voters should expect more heavy campaigning through November. Jess Knox, head of a union-backed group called Protect Colorado’s Future, said the poll numbers for the right-to-work amendment show that labor’s heavy campaigning is paying off.
“We’ve always thought this was going to be a very, very tough fight,” said Knox, who pointed out that right-to-work poll numbers show the amendment could still go either way because almost one in five people haven’t decided.
The only runaway winner in the poll was a measure to steer a bigger portion of existing severance taxes to road construction, with 64 percent supporting it. The strongest reaction went to a relatively minor question, on lowering lower the minimum ago for service in the state legislature from 25 to 21. That proposal tanked more than 2-to-1, with 55 percent saying they’d vote no on lowering the age minimum and only 27 percent saying they liked the idea.
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