DENVER -- Gov. Bill Ritter vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have given unemployment benefits to workers locked out during labor disputes.

The measure (House Bill 1170) passed by the Legislature last week. Ritter's decision comes as union representatives and Safeway and Kings Soopers management try to negotiate new contracts.

Ritter wrote in a letter explaining his decision that, "I believe it is ill-advised and counterproductive to enact legislation that materially impacts the relative bargaining position of parties in the midst of ongoing negotiations."

"In these troubled economic times, I am deeply concerned about the effect a strike or lockout of employees would have on grocery store workers and consumers across the state, and I am concerned that signing this bill into law will make a negotiated resolution of the grocery store contract more difficult, not less."

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 7 said they were disappointed by the governor's decision.

"As someone who voted for Bill Ritter in 2006, and who believed him when he talked about 'policies that intersect with where people struggle' in his inaugural address, I’m really disappointed that he hasn’t kept his promises to working people." said Andrea Karr, a 20-year Safeway employee who works in Englewood and lives in Highlands Ranch, in a news release from the UFCW Local 7. "This was a veto from someone who doesn’t understand people like me, people like me work hard and play by the rules to support our families. The big corporations have the advantage in this fight. They have the money and the power, as the Governor’s veto today showed."

Locked-out employees were previously not automatically eligible for benefits because of a law passed in response to a clash between the United Food and Commercial Workers and grocery stores in 1996.

When King Soopers workers went on strike in 1996, Safeway locked out its workers in support.

The state paid over $5 million in unemployment benefits to the Safeway workers over the protests of the company. The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the move but in 1999, at the urging of retailers, state lawmakers agreed to change the law to make it to make a distinction between offensive and defensive lockouts.

Under the current law, a company can call for a defensive lockout to protect its property from vandalism or if a strike has been called against another company it is coordinating with during negotiations. Unemployment benefits are not paid out.

An offensive lockout occurs when a company locks out its workers for some other reason, such as a tactic to encourage workers to accept a contract offer. Workers would get unemployment benefits then.

But the union argues it's easy for stores to claim a defensive lockout under the law and difficult for unions to disprove them.

Ritter stunned fellow Democrats when he vetoed a bill that would have made it easier for unions to organize in 2007, his first year in office. But then he later cleared the way to allow collective bargaining with state employees, drawing criticism from Republicans.

The UCFW lobbied to pass the lockout bill and much of the debate surrounding it centered on whether it would effect the contract talks now underway between the union and King Soopers, City Market, Safeway and Albertsons. The union originally wanted it to take effect immediately upon signature. At first lawmakers moved out the effective date to 2010 to make it sure it wouldn't affect the current talks but then decided to make it July 1 instead.

Front Range contracts expired last weekend but workers agreed to extend them until May 30 and keep talking even though had voted to authorize a strike. Talks began this week on the Western Slope.

UCFW associate legal counsel Crisanta Duran, who is participating in the talks, said the union's goal is to a have contract signed by May 30.

Cindi Fukami, professor of management at the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business, said coordinated lockouts by companies, who normally compete with one another, help them ensure that the union deals fairly with all of them during contract talks. She didn't think the chance of collecting unemployment benefits, which only cover a portion of lost wages, would lead workers to drag out talks. She said companies don't want lockouts either because of the lost business.

"The fact that they're both talking is really a good sign," Fukami said.