August 10, 2007 10:54 PM UTC

Chamber of Commerce Shrugs Off "Right to Work"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Supporters of so-called “Right to Work” legislation like to claim that Colorado is losing out on attracting businesses to the state because we don’t have “Right to Work” laws in place. As a talking point it sounds great, except that it’s not true.

As Colorado Confidential reports:

“There’s so many more factors that determine if a company is going to succeed, or move, or expand here in Colorado.” says Bill Ray with the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, which lobbies on behalf of businesses in the legislature and works to attract new companies to the state.

In a June issue of the Colorado Statesmen (no link to the article), [Sen. Ted] Harvey was quoted as saying that the top two questions he hears are “Does Colorado have a business property tax and is Colorado a right-to-work state?”

“Different kids of businesses have different kind of concerns,” Ray says, noting that there’s no universal checklist to determine if companies will come to Colorado. “A call center or a hotel might be concerned with labor law, but a high-tech company that employs primarily engineers, that’s really not going to be on their radar screen.”

As far as the law goes, the Metro Chamber of Commerce also sees no problem with current labor regulations.

“Where we are works great for us. We have no desire to swing the pendulum in either direction,” says Ray. “It’s not an impediment to growing a business here in the state of Colorado.”[Pols emphasis]

Couple that with the fact that employment figures continue to rise in Colorado, and suddenly that talking point is, well, just talking. There’s not much else you can say when the Chamber of Commerce says it’s a non-issue.