On Friday night, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed one of the most controversial bills of the Legislative session, which bans collective bargaining for public labor unions.
HB267 passed through the state Senate last week and arrived on the governor’s desk shortly after. Cox then waited a week to take action on the bill.
After the bill was approved by both chambers last week, hundreds of public workers, including many UEA members, gathered in the Capitol rotunda to call on the governor to veto the bill.
Cox released a statement along with news that he signed HB267, one of 12 he signed Friday night.
“Utah has long been known as a state that can work together to solve difficult issues. I’m disappointed that in this case, the process did not ultimately deliver the compromise that at one point was on the table and that some stakeholders had accepted,” he said.
The bill’s sponsors — Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, and Sen. Kirk Cullimore, R-Draper — worked with union leaders to try to come to a compromise on the bill. But when they weren’t able to reach a consensus the lawmakers decided to continue with the original version of the bill that would completely ban public sector collective bargaining.
If Cox had vetoed the bill, Sen. David P. Hinkins, R-Orangeville, was prepared to run an alternative version of the bill that would allow collective bargaining if a labor organization had a majority of employees vote for it. But since Cox has signed the bill that is no longer an option.
This was the first round of bills the governor has signed this year. One of the other bills he signed was HB269, which limits access to single-sex dorms for transgender students.
What will HB267 do?
HB267 will prohibit public sector collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is when an employer and a union come together to negotiate a contract for employees.
“In most of those collective bargaining agreements, it spells out specifically that the union representation is the sole collective bargaining agent, meaning that the public employer is not able to negotiate with anyone else, other than union representatives,” said Teuscher.
According to Teuscher, the bill will safeguard public resources by prohibiting employees from receiving paid leave for union activities. It also requires unions to pay to use spaces that other groups have to pay for, and to report annually to the labor commission the number of members they have and the money they spend.
The bill also provides professional liability insurance that teachers would be able to opt into. Teuscher also submitted a Request for Appropriations that would give the state government the option to pay for part of these insurance policies for teachers.
Now that the bill has been signed it will go into effect on July 1, 2025.
“What it doesn’t do is it doesn’t affect the relationship between any employer or employee in the state that wants to identify with a union, join a union, pay union dues, participate in a union, do union activity,” Teuscher said.
