As both President of the Boulder Area Labor Council (BALC) and co-chair for the Coalition for the Self-Sufficiency Wage, I have had the honor and privilege to help the fight for our most impacted workers: those making minimum wage. It’s taken us more than three years of making our case with Boulder County Commissioners and local cities.
When we saw Boulder city council vote for an increase, all of us celebrated, and I expected to continue the discussions at the other cities. I was very surprised to find myself instead having to defend the position at the state level, a scant two months into minimum wage increases for the city of Boulder.
Much of the early press coverage of HB25-1208, including in Boulder Weekly, seemed to tout how restaurants are in crisis and in imminent danger of shutting their doors. Almost no one did even the bare minimum of research to understand what this means to the workers.
HB-1208 does two things: It overrides the decisions made by local governments (who spent months and months in their own analysis; years, in the case of Boulder) and it results in tipped workers earning less money.
If you’ve ever had to live on underpaid wages, you know every nickel counts. Denver workers will lose a whopping $4 an hour, and Boulder workers will lose $1.72. This is wrong.
Rally for workers
The CO Working Families Party, in partnership with organizations across Colorado, will be hosting a rally in support of workers to say no to wage cuts.
5:30-6:30 p.m. Monday, March 10
Glen Huntington Bandshell, Canyon Boulevard, Boulder
RSVP here
The restaurant lobbyists and the business chambers couldn’t win at the local level, so instead they figured they'd just change the rules and they went to the state legislator instead. They should've been met with an incredulous, “We’re Democrats, we’re pro-working families, we can’t cut wages!” but instead were apparently met with open arms. Open arms that also, much like some of the early reporting, didn’t do any research, or ask for input from “the other side.”
Senator Judy Amabile, D18, was well aware of who in the community was advocating for minimum wage. She was at the BALC Labor Day picnic where we chanted “Raise that stinkin’ minimum wage, Shouldn’t have to toil our lives away…” I thought she had even joined in, but guess I was wrong. I know for sure, she didn’t ask for feedback from us before drafting HB-1208.
I sense a growing trend amongst Colorado Democrats that’s got me worried. HB-1208 is bad enough, but it's just one example of legislative activities undermining working families in some fashion or another.
There’s the usual batch of legislation from the Republicans, like the attempts to “show your papers” that we all come to expect, but to see Democrats doing this breaks my heart. The governor opposed The Worker Protection Act; regulations supporting agriculture workers would be removed under SB25-128. Thankfully, the new “DOGE for Colorado” in SB25-135 that targets the Colorado Department of Labor died in committee.
With friends (Democrats) like this, who even needs enemies (MAGA)?
I know some of these Democrats don’t understand why working people stopped voting for them, and didn’t support the Harris-Walz campaign. I give you the evidence here; bills like these are why.
Policies like cutting tipped wages will undermine working families. Working Families Party has a great memo for Democrats on this. In it, they wrote of the widespread unpopularity of measures that seek to cut wages for tipped workers, and the broader political implications of pursuing and supporting such policies.
“In the current political environment, the shifting allegiances of working class voters — most certainly including restaurant workers and their families — will determine our nation’s trajectory,” the memo reads. “It is hard to imagine any angle of analysis that leads to the conclusion that pushing deeply unpopular wage cuts for working people would be a way to effectively appeal to working-class voters. It is, in fact, almost guaranteed to repel them.”
Our coalition presented plenty of economic analysis which shows that when people are paid better wages, the local economy will thrive — So many that I can’t even link to just one; I had to start a running tally.
People can afford to go out to eat when they make better wages, which seems pretty obvious. Obvious enough that it finally convinced at least two municipalities to make changes.
Our coalition would like to continue our advocacy at the local level, as each town is unique. Louisville, as an example, is experiencing the challenge of recovering economically from the Marshall Fire.
BALC was also going to start building programming to support our immigration community, but instead we’re spending our precious funds — all originating from workers who pay dues out of their own hard-earn money — on preventing attempts to scale back wage increases. An overwhelming majority of Coloradans voted for Amendment 70 to raise the minimum wage; I don’t think we should consider overriding the will of the people so lightly.
If you agree with us, I invite you to contact your state lawmakers. Let them know you support workers.
Members of the house will be voting on this soon. While I hope this bill gets stopped there, feel free to email Senator Amabile ([email protected]) and let her know that if she wants to be a champion for small businesses, she should consider not doing that at the expense of her constituents, most of whom have to work for a living.
In solidarity.
Alejandra Beatty is president of Boulder Area Labor Council, a democratically elected body representing the interests of working people at the state and local level.