Gov. Jared Polis’ threat to veto the Worker Protection Act (WPA) will jeopardize his ambitious climate goals. To meet those goals, Colorado needs the committed and skilled workforce the WPA will ensure.

Across every corner of the state, construction workers need to upgrade more than 6 billion square-feet of commercial and residential buildings to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions. We need utility workers and electricians to build and maintain clean-energy generation. We need workers to modernize our electric grid and manufacture the wires and widgets that will turn it on. Pipefitters need to install many miles of pipes to expand affordable, sustainable geothermal heating and cooling. We need the governor to fulfill his commitment to create good jobs in the state, so Colorado can meet his “moral and economic imperatives” for climate and a clean economy.

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Environmental leaders are worried too few Coloradans will pursue the clean jobs of the future. Their labor colleagues agree, noting two conditions are at play:

1. They hear from workers jobs must be career-long, durable and of sufficient quality to support a family, and
2. They recognize baseline labor requirements for projects must set standards to ensure work is safe and sustainable.

I previously directed Pueblo County’s Economic Development program and was involved in multiple negotiations where local government made investments in businesses. Government investments often require employers to uphold job quality standards for the duration of the incentive term. However, when incentive terms expire, the inherent forces of capitalism cause businesses to seek increased profit and minimize costs. Wages and benefits almost always suffer — either getting outright cut or disproportionately falling out of step with inflation.

Collective bargaining is the only way for job quality to assuredly remain high in perpetuity. Unions negotiate with business owners to set reasonable wage rates, offer health and retirement benefits and provide safe workplaces. Through collective bargaining, employees and employers work together to set employer-specific job quality standards. Multiple studies reveal businesses benefit significantly by having a union, through reduced turnover, improved employee morale, higher productivity and fewer accidents and injuries. Collective bargaining positions companies to be able to attract and retain skilled workforces they need to meet the statewide need.

Colorado legislators are poised to pass the WPA (Senate Bill 5) to modify an outdated law requiring workers to hold a second election after they vote to form a union that intentionally inhibits workers’ ability to unionize. The law’s onerous requirements of achieving a second 75% supermajority vote — after workers vote to unionize — was designed to give employers opportunity to engage in aggressive anti-union intimidation tactics between elections to sow false fears about unionization, including claiming a union will cause layoffs or closure.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other anti-union corporate executives have been emboldened to push back harder on union organizing, all in the name of growing their own business profits at the expense of workers. Unsafe workplaces, low wages, part-time work, and minimal benefits are the wellspring of outsized profits and are at the very root of why these employers are finding themselves short on workers while experiencing high turnover and diminishing workplace satisfaction.

Gov. Polis’ leadership on enacting climate policy is widely recognized across the nation as among the most effective and pragmatic. Vetoing the WPA diminishes the chances jobs in the clean economy will be quality jobs that attract workers — no matter how ideological the work may be — and puts his agenda at risk.

The governor has an opportunity to put Colorado on equal footing with states leading the fight against climate change by signing the WPA into law to secure a workforce up to the task of transforming the state to a fully green economy. I urge him to sign Senate Bill 5 to advance his climate goals.

Chris Markuson is the western states director for the BlueGreen Alliance (BGA). BGA unifies labor unions and environmental organizations into a powerful force to fight climate change, protect the health of people and the environment, stand against economic and racial inequality, and create and maintain good-paying, union jobs in communities across the country.