John M. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Colorado–
Is this déjà vu, or are we trapped in some capitalist remake of Groundhog Day? No! It’s just the Colorado Democratic Party running the same tired, insulting script again. Just months after Gov. Jared Polis slapped down the Worker Protection Act, which would have eliminated arbitrary barriers to unionization, with a veto that screamed loyalty to big business, these so-called progressives are dusting off the same compromised bill and shoving it back into the legislative grinder. The veto was a promise kept to the bosses who fund the party. This recycled bill is about stalling real struggle and keeping power exactly where it’s always been: in the hands of capital.
Harkening back to the farce of 2025: The Worker Protection Act, then SB25-005, sailed through both chambers on strict party lines, backed by every Democrat in the legislature. It aimed to scrap the Colorado Labor Peace Act’s infamous second-election hurdle, a Jim Crow-era holdover from 1943 that demands a supermajority 75% vote for unions to negotiate security fees after a simple majority wins representation. This double-vote nonsense, unique only to Colorado, gives bosses extra time to bully, bribe, and bust organizing drives, ensuring unions stay weak and workers stay divided. Polis, ever the corporate lapdog in progressive clothing, killed it with a veto pen stroke, whining about the need for “peace and stability” between labor and business, as if “stability” hasn’t meant stagnant wages, skyrocketing rents, and unsafe jobs for decades. He claimed it didn’t meet a “high bar” for worker participation, but really, it was about protecting his rich buddies that fund his campaigns, like the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, who cheered the veto as a win for “business interests.” This isn’t a one-off; Polis has a track record of knifing labor, vetoing wage-theft safeguards and anti-coercion bills in 2024, proving his “progressive” label is just a mask for class allegiance to capital.
Fast-forward to the 2026 session, launched Jan. 14, and these Democratic hacks — Rep. Javier Mabrey, Assistant Majority Leader Jennifer Bacon, Sen. Jessie Danielson — declare this recycled balderdash a “top priority,” shoving it through the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee on Feb. 5 by an 8-5 vote, Democrats lockstep in their delusion. Polis, ever the opportunist, signals another veto unless they bend the knee, grumbling that “there’s nothing different” and labeling the rerun “frustrating.”
So why the rerun? Pure cynicism: it lets these careerists grandstand as allies to workers, padding their résumés for the 2026 gubernatorial scrum, while dodging any real fight against the funding elite. Corporate vultures from the Colorado Chamber of Commerce and Colorado Ski Country USA, snubbed in consultations, screech about the “business climate”—their euphemism for wage suppression and union-busting. Democrats know this bill is dead on arrival without overrides or amendments, yet they push it anyway, purely for their game: distract, deflect, and deliver nothing, ensuring the working class remains fractured and powerless. They are relying on the fact that we forgot how they screwed us over less than a year ago!
And what about the spineless union-bosses? Parasitic collaborators who feast on dues while selling out the rank and file. Leaders from the Colorado AFL-CIO, like Dennis Dougherty, rallied outside the Capitol after the 2025 veto but then slunk away without pushing for an override or mass action. Instead, they pivoted to tepid ballot initiatives like Initiative 43, which would mandate “just cause” for firings in firms with over eight employees—a Band-Aid on a gaping wound that Polis and his ilk would likely sabotage anyway. These officials, cozy with Democratic power brokers, settle for crumbs like training funds rather than demanding sector-wide bargaining or ironclad anti-union-busting laws. Their opportunism mirrors the party’s: tie labor’s fate to electoral games, diffuse militancy into petitions and polls, and leave the rank and file twisting in the wind. It’s no wonder union density in Colorado hovers below 7%, below the national average of 9.9%, far from the muscle needed to confront capital.
Meanwhile, Colorado’s working class is getting hammered. Prices are skyrocketing through inflation and wages lag behind, with the average worker scraping by on less than $60,000 a year while housing costs devour half their paycheck. Recent strikes, like the 13-day walkout by Telluride ski patrollers demanding livable pay amid record profits, highlight the raw desperation:unsafe slopes, grueling shifts, and bosses who treat humans like disposable gear. Rights are eroding too: Polis’s vetoes have left workers vulnerable to wage theft, coercive anti-union meetings, and now this stalled reform leaves the second-election trap intact, empowering employers to delay and dismantle organizing. In sectors like healthcare, construction, and service, immigrants and people of color bear the brunt, facing retaliation and deportation threats just for whispering “union.” The material reality is stark: economic pressures force longer hours, second jobs, and broken families, all while the bourgeoisie like Polis (net worth over $400 million) lecture about “job security” as if their position in society is not based on intensifying our exploitation and making our work more and more precarious!
Yet here’s the razor-sharp contradiction gnawing at the guts of this rotten system: these escalating crises — stagnant wages, deadly workplaces, housing unaffordability — are the predictable poison fruit of a capitalist order in which the owning class dictates every move, squeezing surplus from labor while the state props up their rule. Piddling reforms like this recycled Worker’s Protection Act barely scratch the surface, leaving the core rot intact. In fact, there has been a long and deliberate plan by the capitalist class to put labor into a chokehold which it has largely succeeded at.
This killing of labor militancy and power, combined with the serious problems capitalism is facing, create the situation where a risk of serious crisis is imminent. Now, when global supply chain chokepoints — exacerbated by tariffs jacking up costs 2-4.5% for Colorado’s manufacturers and causing havoc on industry — are battering industries which are already hemorrhaging jobs. Manufacturing employment fell 0.9% in 2025 with only a 1% rebound projected for 2026. Besides this, climate-fueled catastrophes are battering Colorado: wildfires like the 100,000-acre Lee Fire in 2025 torching landscapes and economies, extreme heat claiming lives and driving up $24-25 billion in projected losses by 2050, floods and droughts crippling agriculture and recreation while saddling the state with $33-37 billion in adaptation costs through mid-century—all while bosses demand docile workers to keep profits flowing amid the chaos. This is creating a dangerous situation where a crisis worse than 2008 is predicted to happen imminently.
The Democrats, those spineless opportunists, wave this veto-doomed bill like a carrot to siphon off worker rage, but it dodges the real enemy: private control of production that condemns the masses to poverty for the elite’s obscene wealth. History’s dial turns inexorably: tensions simmer and swell until they erupt, as seen in union approval ratings soaring to 68-70% nationwide in 2025 — levels unseen since the 1960s — signaling a proletariat primed for battle, yet herded into the Democrats’ electoral traps where that fire sputters out, unchanneled and betrayed.
Workers can’t wait for saviors in suits; real power builds from the bottom up, through rank-and-file initiative that bypasses bureaucratic roadblocks.
Start by forming shop-floor committee: small, agile groups of coworkers who map grievances, coordinate demands, and enforce them directly. Link up across workplaces: solidarity networks where strikers from one site get backup from others, sharing resources and picket lines to amplify pressure.
Go on the offensive with targeted disruptions: quick-hit walkouts over safety violations, slowdowns to choke production lines, or occupations of key facilities to force negotiations on workers’ terms.
Use digital tools to organize anonymously: encrypted apps for planning, social media blasts to rally public support and shame bosses.
Build coalitions beyond unions: ally with community groups fighting evictions or environmental hazards, turning isolated struggles into a broader front against exploitation.
These tactics aren’t about begging politicians, but are about seizing control, exposing the system’s weaknesses, and forging unity that can’t be vetoed away.
Colorado’s Democrats and union overlords may perpetuate their betrayals, but the response from the toiling masses must be unforgiving: shatter the illusions of their games, organize autonomously, and hammer at capitalism’s weak points. Only through such unrelenting struggle can workers reclaim the power these charlatans have squandered, turning exploitation’s tide into a flood of liberation.