Boulder County commissioners have filed another legal action relating to the Boulder County Employees Union in a move some employees and union representatives have characterized as union busting.
Commissioners, along with Boulder County Public Health (BCPH) and Boulder County Housing Authority (BCHA), filed a motion last month seeking to pause bargaining, scheduled to begin May 19, with the Boulder County Employees Union, which formed in January.
The motion comes after a complaint filed in late February seeking to appeal an earlier decision by theColorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE) to allow BCHA and BCPH employees to be included in the bargaining unit. The county has argued that those employees are not subject to COBCA, the state law that allows county employees to unionize, and that CDLE’s decision is based on a “misinterpretation of how the county is structured.”
The latest filing seeks to delay negotiations until the previous appeal is decided. According to the suit, BCPH and BCHA will spend an estimated $25,000 each during negotiations and continuing before the final determination would cause “irreparable injury” to the agencies.
Dozens of county employees attended the commissioners’ May 1 public comment session, urging commissioners to drop the legal action.
“I would argue that there is no irreparable harm that can be done simply by beginning the process of negotiating in good faith; in my opinion, the county is no longer acting in good faith,” said Brianna Barber, a county employee and elected member of the union’s bargaining committee, during the public comment session. “Please stop union busting. We hear you say that you believe in equity. We listen to you say that you believe in justice. So please demonstrate that you believe in both of those things by pulling the motion to stop bargaining and come to the negotiating table.
“Fighting against the democratic will of your employees with taxpayer dollars is not something you should be proud of.”
Melany Niemann, who has worked at BCPH for 23 years, said at the May 1 session it was “hard to grasp the suggestion that we don't work for the county.”
“All of our web content lives on the county website, and I must follow policies set by the county attorney,” she said of her work on the communications team. “Recently, the county added a new requirement that all of my website edits be approved by someone at the county level before they can be published.”
County commissioners serve as the board of BCHA and appoint the board of BCPH. Boulder County provides 29% of BCPH’s budget, county spokesperson Gloria Handyside wrote in an email to Boulder Weekly; the rest comes from “multiple sources,” including state, federal and private funding. BCHA, she said, receives 21% of its funding from the county.
At the May 1 meeting, commissioner Ashley Stolzmann said the commissioners didn’t choose the executive director of BCPH and don’t set pay or wages for the agency.
“It actually wouldn't cause any problem to start negotiating with county employees,” Stolzmann said, “but I think we need to understand who that is, so we can be really successful working together going forward.”
Of the 1,419 employees who were eligible to vote on forming a union, 59 were from BCHA and 128 were from BCPH, according to Handyside.