Colorado has a pretty good business climate, from the perspective of both business and labor. Is it perfect? No. But it runs pretty well. Companies are able to operate and succeed. Unemployment is a bit lower here than elsewhere, there are a lot of well paying jobs, and labor strife is pretty minimal.
Most of the effort here is that of businesses going on about their business. And the bottom line is profit for the owners and salaries for the workers all come out of that effort so the concentration on actually working means there's more for everyone. Yes, there is always a tension between company and worker. There is always a tension between union and executives. There should be.
So let's look at the upcoming ballot initiatives being proposed. There's bad ones on both sides but lets start with the worst one. The Just Cause Initiative has the potential to inflict more damage on this state than TABOR, and to do so rapidly. This will destroy parts of the economy, and the jobs that existed in them. It is a bullet aimed at the heart of Colorado's economy. Lets take a look at this train-wreck, here's the title:
An amendment to the Colorado constitution concerning cause for employee discharge or suspension, and, in connection therewith, requiring an employer to establish and document just cause for the discharge or suspension of a full-time employee; defining "just cause" to mean specified types of employee misconduct and substandard job performance, the filing of bankruptcy by the employer, or documented economic circumstances that directly and adversely affect the employer; exempting from the just cause requirement business entities that employ fewer than twenty employees, nonprofit organizations that employ fewer than one thousand employees, governmental entities, and employees who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement that requires just cause for discharge or suspension; allowing an employee who believes he or she was discharged or suspended without just cause to file a civil action in state district court; allowing a court that finds an employee’s discharge or suspension to be in violation of this amendment to award reinstatement in the employee's former job, back wages, damages, or any combination thereof; and allowing the court to award attorneys fees to the prevailing party.
The honeybee is a small part of our environmental system and yet very critical to the entire system. In the Denver/Boulder area we have a vibrant high-tech industry, including a gigantic number of start-ups. This area actually has a higher percentage of high-tech jobs than Silicon Valley (Silicon Valley has a larger total number).
A key component of this system is all the start-ups. Sun located here because of all these businesses. Conoco-Phillips for the same. We are becoming a center for renewable energy research in large part due to these start-ups. To have a future with these kind of high-paying jobs that in turn generate more jobs (all job growth in the U.S. comes from small companies), we need these companies.
Now lets look at start-ups. Most of them fail. Of the ones that succeed, most of them come very close to failing several times before they finally make it. It is a very tough Darwinian environment where you have to be very good, react very quickly, and have an idea that people actually will pay for once it's delivered. And the people who put money into these ideas have to look for the ones where the odds, while bad, are better than any of the other opportunities.
So what does this initiative do to start-up companies? It kills them. Here's why (speaking from personal experience):
- I have fired people who are competent. Because competent is not sufficient, to survive in the start-up world you need people who are incredibly good (the rule of thumb is the top 5%). Having to hang on to people who are average (or god forbid mediocre) means we get beat by another company that is staffed with superstars.
- I have fired superstars. Because how well a team works together has a larger impact on success than the skills of any individual. So someone who is the best programmer, but does not play well with others, is actually a detriment to the team as a whole.
- I have made mistakes. In a start-up you have to make decisions quickly. By definition some of those decisions are wrong. But if you make sure on every decision, once again you're out of business. So at times I have certainly fired people who were competent, and would have done a good job, but I made a bad decision.
- Lets say they are clearly incompetent. We hired (on contract) a sales team who's job was to call leads. And they were required to work at least 20 hours/week. So when we ended the contract and ended up in court as to was it "for cause," even though the sales team admitted they had made a total of 1 call over 2 months and had worked under 20 hours some weeks, the judge still found it was not for cause (and we had to pay for an additional 30 days of time). So even if someone is clearly incompetent, that doesn't mean a judge will agree.
So what does the above do to startup companies (which grow to over 20 people quite quickly)? They will get saddled with incompetents. And that will have a devastating effect on morale as the others then have to work even harder to make up for these boat-anchors. A successful start-up is a group of people that are putting their heart and soul into making a long-shot a success. This kills that drive.
And so what happens to the venture capital money? Venture capitalists aren't stupid - that money all goes out of state to places where a company can fire those they need to fire. For really good ideas they will tell people that if they move to any other state, they will fund them. Which is ironical since we presently have people moving to Colorado for the start-up environment here.
In short, rather than building on the Silicon Valley we presently have here and possibly becoming the top place in the country for renewable energy start-ups, this will stop virtually all future start-ups and piss away what we presently have. This puts Colorado on the road to an economy where the only businesses here are ones that must be here such as retail. For any company that can locate elsewhere, it will.
My company competes world-wide. We derive no advantage from our geographical location. Nor do we derive an advantage from being inside the U.S. We have competitors located in both China and India and their location also has no impact on who wins sales. We successfully compete against these other companies while paying higher salaries, health insurance, more in taxes, etc. But we can't compete with this proposed albatross around our neck.
And here's the kicker, if we go out of business, there's no jobs. Even if this union led wet-dream public school teacher level of job protection is imposed, when a company shuts down, all the jobs are gone. So if you impose iron-clad job protection for all employees at a 55 employee start-up, you have not protected those 55 people from being fired - you have destroyed those 55 jobs.
In addition, this does not protect the job, it protects the bozo presently holding the job. When we fire someone, it's rarely a downsizing, it's because we need someone better. So the job still exists, it's just we will offer it to someone else. So this initiative does not protect jobs per-se, it merely protects the person presently in that job who is inadequate for the position.
Ok, so this initiative, if passed, will drive jobs out of state, destroy the high-tech business environment built up at great effort here, and devastate our economy. Because of how damaging it will be, hopefully it will fail and then we're done - right?
No. Even if this fails, it has the potential to cause quite a bit of damage this election year due to blow-back. My plan was to donate the maximum to Betsy Markey and Joe Whitcomb. And probably to Joe Rice and Morgan Carroll if their races were looking close. All gone. I donate to Act-Blue candidates every month. No more. There's needs vs preferences. I need to keep my company in business. I have put a ton of money and effort into it and I have a lot of employees who depend on our success for their monthly paycheck. That responsibility comes before my preference in a number of legislative races. My company will survive another 2 years of Marilyn Musgrave. It probably won't survive this initiative.
I'm just one person. But I'm not the only one. Virtually every liberal/progressive/Democrat/etc in the high-tech industry will be devoting some, if not all, of their time and effort this election to defeating this proposed disaster. Because like me, while they would prefer to see progressive candidates win in November, they're more concerned about having a job after November.
And in every single high-tech company there is an example where you can say "imagine if we could not have fired *****" and everyone there will shudder at the thought. This initiative does not appeal to those who are good at their job, it appeals to the marginally competent. Every progressive who looks at this and shudders at it's effect, that's one less person that will be out there working for a progressive candidate because their time and money will be focused on defeating this.
It also means people like me are being driven into the arms of the business interests opposing this (you know - the bad guys - Republicans). We might find other common ground, such as taking on the teacher's unions in order to fix the public schools here. That would be a good thing for the state, but a bad thing for all the unionized incompetent school teachers.
In other words, this initiative is a horrible idea, not just for businesses, competent employees, Democratic candidates, and the state economy, but potentially also harmful for the unions themselves. It's amazing but it look like ProtectFuckColoardo'sFuture has managed to propose an initiative that causes major harm, while providing nothing positive.
As to those that will say this is just a response to Amendments 47 & 49, when someone else is drowning kittens your response should not be "well the we're going to drown puppies." A pox on both your houses! (What we really need is a well funded progressive group dedicated to a NO on all these proposals. I'd much prefer to donate to that rather than Coloradans for Responsible Reform which is staying silent on 47/49.)
