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By Roger Hessler

For 11 years as a Colorado Department of Transportation employee in Sterling, I have driven a snowplow in the freezing cold and spent hours hunched over highway markers in 100-degree heat. I love my job, keeping Colorado’s highways passable and safe. I do my job with integrity.
So you can understand my surprise and frustration that irresponsible and politically motivated attacks have been hitting state employees like me squarely between the eyes. It’s wrong and it’s time to set the record straight.

State employees have the same hopes for our jobs as any other working person has. We just want to feel like our work and our input matters. We just want to do a good job.

But many of us feel like we’re spinning our wheels in an endless, out-of-touch bureaucracy. We chase unnecessary paperwork, use outdated equipment and fear for our jobs if we speak up about dangerous working conditions or wasted tax dollars.

Believe me, those of us on the front lines hear the public loud and clear when they say state government should be run more like a successful business. We agree.

That is why the organization I belong to, the Colorado Association of Public Employees, has been talking To the governor about forming a partnership with the state work force that is based on principles used by two very successful companies — Kaiser Permanente and Southwest Airlines.

Both of these organizations are highly successful because they unite managers and frontline employee around the goals of the organization and because they engage and challenge their employees to deliver reliable and accountable customer service. Most of the companies’ employees are union members that have committed to solving problems — not causing them — and the employers treat their employees as partners rather than cogs in a big bureaucratic wheel.

I know firsthand that this partnership approach can work for Colorado.

At CDOT our new director is a pragmatic Republican and a respected former lawmaker who is using partnership principles to turn our agency around. He inherited a computer system that fouled up our purchasing system so badly there were times we ran out of asphalt. The computer system also couldn’t generate our paychecks.

But rather than join us in offering solutions to many problems facing our state, a handful of Republican politicians continue to drive their party away from its moderate majority by attacking people like me.

They make grandiose statements like a state employee partnership will “bust the budget,” even though they know that we have the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, and voters who wouldn’t stand for that.

When employees come together to improve the way the state does business, they call it a “shakedown.” Yet, they spent years ignoring state workers who tried to blow the whistle on $300 million in contracts awarded for computer systems that didn’t work.

They claim that employees would be “forced to join a union” under a partnership when all we hope for is the same freedom to vote for a unified workplace that private-sector employees have.
Last fall, Colorado voters sent a clear message that the state had to perform better.

Now, we have a new governor who was elected to reform state government for the 21st century. He is asking academics, business leaders and citizens for their ideas. As the folks on the front lines, state employees have thoughtful ideas, too.

We hope that the principles of partnership are considered as part of any government reform, and we also hope for less reckless rhetoric and more sincere discussions.

Roger Hessler is a CDOT employee and a chapter president of CAPE.

READER COMMENTS

The most powerful unions of government workers in the US are the teacher's unions. And if there is anything that we agree about in government, it is that American public school education is appalling.

The difference between South West Airlines and the State of Colorado is that if the union is unreasonable to South West Airlines, Frontier will take over and South West will go out of business.

On the other hand, the State of Colorado is a monopoly. If the unions run the state, they run everything.

You see, it comes down to a question of trust. Public employee unions destroyed American education. They made it impossible for the Post Office to be competitive for a long time. And the police unions made it impossible to prosecute police brutality in many places. The fact is that many of us do not trust the union to look out for the good of the the citizens who are not state employees.

And the reason I don't trust you is that under a law just passed, once a union gets control, everyone has to join and pay dues. You knew that and your weaselly comment in the letter indicated to me that you were trying to obfuscate the truth.

Jim,
You forgot to mention the highway bridges collapsing.

Fine form the partnership, but NO collective bargaining. Give up the guaranteed retirement benefits and adopt a 401K plan like the rest of us have and be willing to take pay/benefit cuts when the state doesn't do well financially.

Uh Phil.....
What part of the lie of ref's C and D did you miss?
Or do you actually believe that there won't be more of the same? It worked once, the politicians will be back for seconds, thirds...........
And the threat will be that without an TABOR Timeout, our roads will fall apart, our economy will suffer horribly and the State will all but self destruct.
Or am I being overly cynical?
Naw, it'll happen, just watch.

Jim, you won't pay higher taxes unless you vote for it. We have TABOR in this state. You can't raise the budget without taking it to a vote of the people.

So quit "public service" and go to work for any one of several private companies that contract to do road work!
No one in their right mind believes for a second that unionizing Public Employees won't result in higher costs and less work.
And I, for one, have zero interest in paying more taxes so others can have a better life. I pay enough as it is, and as an 'investment' it sucks!
11 years and you STILL haven't figured out that you don't like your career potential?
Sheesh.......

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