A divided Denver City Council committee on Tuesday forwarded to the full council an ordinance that would require winning bidders on city service contracts to keep the employees of the previous contract holder for 90 days.
The proposal, which is strongly opposed by business interests and just as strongly supported by labor groups, will come before the full council within the next two weeks.
To garner support, Councilman Chris Nevitt limited the scope by agreeing that the new ordinance would not govern licensees, such as rental-car firms, or concessionaires, such as fast-food operators, who operate on city-owned land.
“At the end of the day, this is pretty small-bore,” Nevitt said.
Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz said she feared the measure was a backdoor way of ensuring that workers are unionized, but Nevitt denied that was the case.
Nevitt also stressed that the ordinance allows firms to fire workers when there is good cause and to reduce the workforce. In such instances when the new firm trims the workforce, seniority will guide who gets to keep their jobs.
Councilman Charlie Brown said he balked at mandating that firms keep unionized employees, even for a temporary 90-day time frame.
“To me, that does not present itself as peace in the valley,” Brown said.
Nevitt said the measure will protect employees who perform such functions as washing windows and janitorial work at Denver International Airport and the rest of the city.
The airport has similar rules in place, but they apply only to contracts in which workers are paid $15 an hour or less. At least a half dozen cities, including San Diego and Philadelphia, have similar laws on the books.
Nevitt said most bidders on such service work end up keeping the previous firm’s employees anyway but that not all of them do.
Alan Lee, an area director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said he hopes to rework the proposal so it will require the city to review all service contracts to determine whether those employees should become city workers.
The Downtown Denver Partnership and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce oppose Nevitt’s proposed ordinance. Airlines also have come out against the proposal, saying they fear it could increase the cost of doing business.
“We calculate our costs in tenths of a tenth of a penny,” warned Peter Kowalchuk, a spokesman for Frontier Airlines, who said the airlines fear they will have to spend extra to make sure they are complying with any new worker-retention law.
Councilman Paul Lopez said that as a child he saw his father suffer after he lost a job as a janitor when a contract changed hands.
“Let’s not forget these are humans,” Lopez said. “Let’s not forget what this means to those employees just getting by.”
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
