-By Warner Todd Huston
We just ran across this interesting article in the Rocky Mountain News by Vincent Carroll. Carroll bemoans the way that the Denver City council has so completely sold out to unions that even the fact that the city could save money on parking contract management fees makes them think unions are somehow under attack.
After all, kowtowing to union interests has gotten so pronounced that one council member objected last week to a proposed contract with a company to manage airport parking for fear that its modest management fee signified a covert plan to cut union staffing.
“That raised my eyebrows, and right away I thought that I hope that doesn’t come on the backs of the employees,” said councilman Paul Lopez.
In the normal course of affairs, it would be considered good news that the most highly rated bid for a $70 million, five-year parking contract also included the lowest management fee among four proposals. But such is Lopez’s union-centric view of the world – he worked as an organizer before his election last year – that even a management fee can’t be accepted at face value.
Believe it or not, Lopez is only one of several council members who have expressed reservations about the proposed fee for Standard Parking ($510,000 a year, as opposed to bids of $656,000, $790,000 and $1.3 million). It’s as if the company, which also operates parking at airports in Chicago, Kansas City, Cleveland and Portland, wasn’t competent to figure out what fee makes sense to its bottom line.
Council members didn’t only wonder whether the city might be better off paying a larger fee. They lectured the company on its duty to reach a “mutually agreeable” collective-bargaining deal. “Having a union representing our work force out at the airport is very important, particularly in light of the thousands of union members that are going to be flying in and seeing our city with the Democratic National Convention,” declared Chris Nevitt rather superfluously.
Meanwhile, Rocky reporter Daniel Chacon has discovered that Nevitt and two other council members seemingly functioned as informal negotiators on the union’s behalf during a recent meeting with labor leaders and Standard Parking executives. One company official told Chacon he was “a little taken aback” by the pre-meeting hugs between council members and union representatives.
And speaking of overkill, it’s been less than a month since the council approved a proclamation honoring Leslie Moody, president of the Denver Area Labor Federation. (Nevitt once ran a nonprofit think tank founded by the federation.) After three irritated council members made a point of vacating the chamber during the vote, Lopez offered this curious assessment, according to The Denver Post: “I respect their opinion. But there should be no controversy about the need for a living wage or access to health care or affordable housing.”
But of course there is controversy over the definition of “affordable housing” and how to provide it, the definition of a “living wage” and whether government should guarantee it, and the best way to cover the medically uninsured.
But I suppose you’d have to search beyond the confines of the labor federation to locate such differing views.
Amazing how in the hip pocket of the unions the city council is in Denver, eh? A shame, too.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston