It’s not just on Colorado street corners and intersections where people are looking for handouts. Union leaders are panhandling big time for an infusion of cash they have not earned.

One of the hottest, and totally unnecessary, controversies that is eating up legislative bandwidth at the Capitol is a proposal for a gift to union leaders — one that’s unlikely to trickle down to working families.

For 80 years, the state has had a unique legal structure governing unionization. The “Labor Peace Act” established a two-tiered union election system. The first election focuses on the up-or-down choice of whether to unionize a workplace. If the first is successful, a second election is held to decide whether workers who opt out of joining the union still can be required to pay a fee to the union for “representation.”

Unions hope that workers look at the amount of these “fees” — which are often slightly less than full union dues — and then decide to shelve their personal concerns, avoid controversy in the workplace and sign up for full membership. Either way, unions win, and workers’ personal freedom loses.

This is why organized labor is pushing hard to upend the Labor Peace Act, swing the balance sharply toward their side, and eliminate the second election, which requires a 75% vote of the bargaining unit to be approved.

If unions get their way — and that’s anything but guaranteed despite the massive Democrat majority in the House and Senate — they no longer would have to convince workers to unfairly confiscate funds from their coworkers who, for whatever reason, prefer to not join the union. It greases the wheels toward mandatory forced unionization in Colorado.

Put yourself in the shoes of a union leader.

If belonging to unions provided such a boost in pay and economic security for workers and their families, the number of men and women opting out of union membership within a bargaining unit would be tiny. Too small, frankly, to merit notice.

However, it’s apparent that the folks who might opt out is of such a significant number union leaders aren’t confident in making their case. That’s why they want the Legislature to give them a hall pass.

They’d just rather hoover up the cash, no questions asked.

It’s also ironic that unions are in such need of a life raft that they are asking the liberal Legislature to eliminate an election that protects a workplace minority — after these same progressives have been howling for four years about the need to “protect democracy.”

Unions in Colorado have been operating from a position of weakness and decline for years. A quick check of the numbers shows why they believe they need a hand.

In Colorado, less than 7% of workers belong to unions, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics — slightly below the 10% national average. The help that unions need is acute in the private sector, since more than one third of the state’s public sector workers are unionized.

This is not a new issue.

In his first term, Gov. Bill Owens (for whom I worked) prohibited the union then representing state workers from having union dues deducted from each paycheck. This meant that instead of having an incremental amount hidden among the deductions on a pay stub, workers would have to write a lump sum dues check.

As a result of this reform, workers got sticker shock when they understood how much they were paying each year. The union membership numbers cratered.

Clearly, the return on annual investment wasn’t there.

The union bailout bill is hitting some big headwinds. Business groups, led by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, are mounting a strong pressure campaign and it’s working. Polling numbers are showing that the measure, as introduced, is so unpopular that Joe Biden has higher approval numbers. And Gov. Jared Polis rattled a veto saber in his State of the State address.

Like so much of what the far left proposes in our state, the union bailout bill aims to benefit the elite leadership of interest groups, while overlooking the needs of the real grassroots Coloradans these elites pretend they are trying to help. It’s a handout for union leaders without a hand up for workers.

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.