by Dmitry Polyakov
[Ed. note: Guest author Dmitry Polyakov, from St. Petersburg, Russia, is a Legislative Education and Practice Program Fellow who splits time as an intern between the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Colorado Legislature. He comments occasionally on American politics from a Russian perspective for The Thicket .]
Every other Thursday during the Sixty-Sixth Colorado General Assembly a bi-partisan Labor Caucus serves lunch to discuss current bills affecting labor and to present labor lobbyists' take on them to state lawmakers.
It was one of those busy Thursdays in the beginning of the legislative session when my supervisor, House Majority Policy Director Terry Whitney, sent me to the Labor Caucus lunch to observe what was on the labor lobbyists' agenda on that day.
The lunch started at noon, bringing together lobbyists and a legislative crowd: state representatives, senators and their staffers, along with always-desperate-for-some-free-meals legislative interns—like me. The overall atmosphere was calm and friendly. It didn't matter if you were just a legislative intern or a member of the house or committee chair—everyone was treated equally. Labor representatives spoke on issues of concern to them; legislators, staffers and interns digested information and food. The lunch took only an hour: in that time everybody was up-to-speed on labor-related legislative issues, fed and (therefore) happy. That was the Labor Caucus lunch paid for by working class Americans who want to defend their interests using democratic and constitutional methods. Everyone at the lunch was respected for doing his or her job and not for having a longer title on a business card.
The Labor Caucus lunch was a very interesting experience for me--something we Russians don't have a habit of doing. The whole concept of having serious labor policy dialogues over a slice of pizza and a glass of soda seemed strange and new to me. But, I figured, some pizza and face-to-face honest conversations are way better than cash kickbacks, champagne and caviar dinners, and paid-for cruises that lobbyist often supply legislators with in my part of the world… Now such lunches appear to me to be very simple, but transparent and truly democratic instruments, that people in Russia should also consider using their attempts to influence legislative decision making.
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