The Denver City Council is on the verge of referring a question to the November ballot that would ask Denver voters if city workers should have the right to unionize and collectively bargain with city management.

But on Monday the council focused on passing a handful of amendments to the ballot question that were designed in part to ensure the support of the city’s top boss: Mayor Mike Johnston.

With those changes to the ballot language now in place — five different amendments passed unanimously on Monday — supporters including City Councilwoman Sarah Parady are already looking forward to this fall.

“We’re going to pass it tonight, the voters need to pass it in November,” Parady said at a raucous pro-union rally held in front of the City and County Building on Monday afternoon.

Parady was jumping ahead a bit. The measure must still come back from a second and final vote next week after one of the amendments changed the bill title. But that is viewed as a formality at this point. Eleven of the city’s 13 council members have signed as co-sponsors on the legislation. The council voted 13-0 to pass the measure on the city’s electorate on first reading on Monday night.

“Denver is ready to stand up and we commend the many interested parties that we have worked with including the mayor to bring the best version possible of this ballot measure to the voters of Denver in November,” Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez said at that afternoon rally.

Here are some of the changes Monday’s amendments made to the proposed ballot measure:

Unionized employees of Denver Water and Denver County Court will not have a qualified right to strike unlike many other employees covered by the ballot measure. Instead, those workers would have access to binding arbitration in the event they reach an impasse when bargaining with management.
The ballot measure’s effective date has been moved back until Jan. 1, 2026, to give city leaders more time to prepare. The ballot language also now sets up a system that staggers the timeline by which bargaining units — groups of city employees in the same agency or department that want to bargain as a group — that report to the mayor’s office can be formed. No more than five units under the executive branch can be formed between 2026 and 2030 and each must be made up of at least 50 employees.
The standard that would allow city leaders to deny unionized employees the right to strike was also adjusted. Under an earlier version of the ballot measure threats to public health, safety and welfare had to be found to be both “imminent” and “substantial” to justify denial of a strike. Now “imminent” has been dropped and those threats only need to be found to be “substantial” by the overseeing authority to overrule the qualified right to strike. The amendment also established a standard that a county court judge may use to overturn a decision that prevents employees from striking. The judge may overrule decision-makers if that judge finds they abused their discretion.
Discipline was removed as a bargaining topic. Instead, unionized workers would have the right to bargain over disciplinary appeals.

Johnston on Monday sent a letter to the City Council voicing his support for many of the amendments. His reasoning included making sure that any potential strike by public employees does not disrupt critical services and ensuring that the city is not spending an inordinate amount of time bargaining with potentially dozens of bargaining units.

Earlier Monday, Johnston told The Denver Post he supports collective bargaining but conditioned his support for the ballot measure on the passage of the amendments.

“We want to see it work for the city,” Johnston said. “We also want to make sure we have a structure that will work to serve the residents of the city as well as our employees and so we had a handful of key changes we thought we needed to help ensure that mutual success …”

On Monday night, Parady told the council chamber that she was now counting Johnston as a supporter.

In a statement released later that evening, Johnston affirmed his support and thanked council members for working “in good faith to strengthen this initiative.”

“Denverites know we can provide essential public services and protect the rights of city employees at the same time,” Johnston said in that statement.

A major chunk of the city’s workforce already has collective bargaining rights. Those would be the rank-and-file members of the Denver Fire Department, Denver Police Department and Denver’s deputy sheriffs.

Peter Simon, an 11-year employee of Denver Public Library, was among the city staffers who spoke in favor of the ballot measure at Monday’s rally and public hearing.

“If we get collective bargaining like our teachers we can bring our experience, our knowledge, our passion and our unique front-line perspective to the library’s leadership,” he said.

Stronger Denver, the name of the pro-union campaign that has been pushing for collective bargaining at Denver city hall, is also circulating a petition to get a measure on the ballot in November. That version of the measure, which has not been changed since it was introduced in May, is expected to be abandoned so the campaign can focus on supporting the version that the City Council is backing, officials said.

Updated (at 7:28 p.m. on July 9, 2024): This story has been updated with additional comments from Mayor Mike Johnston and to reflect that Councilman Darrell Watson has signed as a co-sponsor of the collective bargaining referral measure.

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Originally Published: July 9, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.