Kudos to Shawn Mitchell and Ted Harvey for voting against Ellen Golombek to head the State Department of Labor and Employment.  After all, it’s what she advocated when opposing Bill Owens’s appointment of Vicki Armstrong in 1999.

But the Denver Post story more or less missed the point.  Again.  Not all unions are created equal.  She headed up the state AFL-CIO, sure.  But that’s an organization that’s been declining in membership and importance for pretty my entire lifetime.  It did damage in its day, but can do far less now, given than less than 7% of the private workforce is unionized.  There’s a case to be made against unions in general, but that case has been already been won.

Golombek is far more dangerous because of her political strategizing as the SEIU’s director of government affairs, which goes completely unmentioned in the Post report.  Public employees can do valuable work, but their unions are designed to use your tax dollars to pick negotiating partners willing to make you work until 70 so they can retire at 55.

Colorado WINS’s efforts to unionize state employees have thus far been a bust.  Expect them to get a boost from political advocates with their hands on the levers.