A number of private employers in coal-transition communities would have to give hiring preferences to coal workers losing their jobs at local facilities under a bill that is moving quickly through the Colorado Legislature.
Senate Bill 52, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Dylan Roberts of Frisco and Republican Sen. Marc Catlin of Montrose, is the latest salvo in Colorado’s eight-year effort to provide a “just transition” for workers losing jobs as the state shifts away from coal-based power. Legislators previously approved programs to retrain workers and to have shuttering power plants reimburse governments for lost economic impact, but this is the first effort seeking to compel other private employers in those communities to contribute to worker stability.
The bill takes on some urgency, since each of the state’s six remaining coal-fired power plants is set to close by 2031 as Gov. Jared Polis pushes to transition the energy grid first to natural-gas and renewable-energy power and then to greater percentages of wind, solar and other alternative energies. That will lead to economic upheavals in northwest Colorado, Morgan County and Pueblo, where coal-fired plants have been a large provider of area jobs and where longtime workers will have to seek new careers in the coming years.
How hiring preference would work
SB 52 would require that employers within each of those communities that are in five industries — construction, railroad operation, utilities, energy-generation facilities and advanced manufacturing — create hiring preferences for qualified coal-transition workers. Not only would those private employers have to offer jobs to transitioning workers if their skills match job descriptions, but they must report annually to the Colorado Just Transition Office on their recruitment efforts and the number of workers hired.
Bill backers, including labor unions say the state has obligations to these workers and must do what it can to ensure that they can stay in their communities if they choose to do so, even after their plants or their work associated with those plants goes away.
“This is a really unique but important opportunity to help these folks,” Roberts told the Senate Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 5. “This bill contains a very narrow hiring preference, but one that fulfills the goals of the ‘Just Transition’ promise … These people have worked very hard for decades.”
Pushback on the mandate to private employers
Legislators across the political spectrum have agreed that the state needs to provide help to these workers, particularly as it is leading the efforts to close these plants in favor of electricity production involving fewer greenhouse-gas emissions. But several Republicans questioned whether the state was overstepping its boundaries by dictating to private businesses that they too must help those workers.
Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Republican who represents Morgan County, said during Thursday’s House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the bill that she feels like the government has moved from picking winners and losers the energy sector to picking winners and losers in the labor force. SB 52 seems to be adding one more mandate on employers in an attempt to fix the original bill that launched the Just Transition Office, she said, though she ended up voting for the bill.
Rep. Lori Garcia Sander, R-Eaton, went further in her criticism, saying that it’s unfortunate that Colorado decided to kill its “golden goose” industry and that it now seems to be pushing for more government control to offset that. She was one of just two Republicans who voted against the bill as it came out of House committee on an 11-2 tally after it had passed the Senate on a 29-3 margin.
“My biggest problem with the bill is it is mandating private businesses’ hiring practices,” Garcia Sander said. “When we’re putting into state law that a private business must have a hiring preference for anybody, I don’t think that’s the role of state government.”
Amendments narrow hiring preference
Sponsors have made several attempts to limit the scope of the hiring-preference mandate.
Roberts added an amendment in the Senate committee that requires coal-transition job applicants to meet all requirements of another job, rather than the minimum requirements, to get the hiring preference. And he added another provision that the hiring preference does not apply if a company is promoting from within to fill an open job or if its hiring and promotion practices are laid out in a collective bargaining agreement.
Then on Friday in the House, sponsoring Democratic Reps. Meghan Lukens of Steamboat Springs and Tisha Mauro of Pueblo, who both represent one or more coal-transition communities, narrowed the bill further. They added amendments clarifying that an affected business may hire a non-coal-transition worker when no workers in that category are qualified for a job, that the hiring preference applies only to employment in the coal-transition community and that the preference applies only to coal-transition workers from those specific communities.
“This bill is for the coal-transition workers who have powered Colorado for decades,” Lukens told the House.
Does bill have any teeth?
During Thursday’s House committee hearing, Rep. Karen McCormick, D-Longmont, asked how the state would enforce the hiring-preference mandate were the bill to become law. She got different answers from the two sponsors.
First, Mauro responded that the bill is more of an ask of local employers than an absolute mandate. She said she was particularly supportive of a separate provision of the bill that allows communities like hers to invest the money that they receive from the companies closing their coal plants through an investment firm that can help them achieve greater returns than governments can get now through more limited investment opportunities.
“This is a good-faith effort,” Mauro said. “There really isn’t any teeth in it.”
However, Lukens quickly followed that answer by saying that the reports that the covered businesses in each coal-transition community are required to file with the Just Transition Office beginning next year are the real teeth to the bill. That will allow the state to see if the hiring preference is being honored and whether the bill is making a difference to keeping former coal workers employed.
SB 52 must receive a final vote of approval from the House, and it could go up for that as early as Monday. Senators must then concur with the changes made in the House before it can advance to Polis’ desk.