Q&A WITH DENVER CITY COUNCIL MEMBER SARAH PARADY ON WORKERS' RIGHTS By Andrew Fraieli THE DENVER VOICE SPOKE WITH at-large Councilmember Sarah Parady about workers’ rights in Colorado and Denver, some of which are complicated, others that some residents may be unaware of. This dialogue has been edited for length and clarity. ANDREW FRAIELI: Could you tell me a bit about your legal career and your specific background with workers’ rights? SARAH PARADY: I owned a small law firm for about 10 years — before I ran for council — that represented mostly low-wage workers. We did some civil rights work, but our practice areas included discrimination, wage theft, and various kinds of retaliation. We would represent whistleblowers. Of course, there’s a distinction between employment law and labor law, so I wasn’t doing anything involving labor — like union organizing — but we would sometimes get cases that involved employees being individually retaliated against, punished, or fired, for having been involved in that kind of work. My clients were employees, not unions, in other words. I got the chance to get involved in a lot of state legislation on these kinds of topics, too, because it’s been something that Colorado law has really shifted on in the last, I don’t know, 10 years. For example, I was involved with a lot of the big bills that have passed really big changes at the state level, particularly the Denver City Council At-Large Member Sarah Parady | Photo courtesy of City of Denver Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. I was one of the people that kind of conceptualized that and drafted and advocated for the legislature and with the sponsors. I’m pretty proud of that one. AF: My next question was going to be how that carried into your work as a council member, so I’ll just check that off the list. SP: Well, that was state legislation before [I was on] Council actually, I was still an attorney. On Council, we put the right for city workers to unionize on the ballot, and it passed, which is a change to the city charter. Our workers never had the right to bargain collectively and now they do — other than the safety workers, which have had that or have had that right for a long time. And, I think, my first bill on Council was giving the city auditor the ability to issue subpoenas to companies that they’re investigating for wage theft so that they can get information. A lot of the city wage ordinances are still relatively new and have evolved a lot in recent years. We’re just always finding little pieces that kind of need improvement, right? AF: What do you see as the most important right for workers to be aware of that they often don’t know? SP: So, I taught just one semester of like, employment law 4 COMMUNITY PROFILE
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