Members of the public listen to Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, explain a bill that would prohibit public unions from collective bargaining at the Utah Capitol Building on Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025. (Katie McKellar/Utah News Dispatch)
A bill that would change how unions representing teachers, firefighters and police officers negotiate their contracts narrowly cleared a legislative hurdle on Wednesday, despite widespread opposition from some of Utah’s labor groups.
HB267, which would prohibit public sector unions from collective bargaining, is shaping up to be one of the most hotly debated bills this legislative session. On Wednesday afternoon, it barely cleared the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee with a 4-3 vote.
Sens. Brady Brammer, R-Highland, Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, Chris Wilson, R-Logan, and Dan McCay, R-Riverton, all voted yes. Sens. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville and Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, voted against the bill.
But the tie breaking vote, cast by McCay, came with a caveat — the sponsor, Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, has to continue meeting with stakeholders who oppose the bill to try and find a compromise.
“My yes today is not a guarantee for a yes in the future,” McCay said.
Teuscher hinted at a compromise on Monday, before his bill cleared the House after lengthy debate and a 42-32 vote. And on Wednesday, Cullimore, who is sponsoring the bill in the Senate, said there could be an amendment in the works, where if more than 50% of employees in an organization, like a school district or fire department, vote for a union to represent them, it could engage in collective bargaining.
As for McCay’s request, Teuscher won’t have any problem finding stakeholders who oppose his bill. The criticism to HB267 has been intense, with lawmakers claiming to have received thousands of emails urging a “no” vote, a Utah Education Association petition garnering at least 13,000 signatures against the bill, and dozens of people showing up to the committee meeting to voice their concerns, so much that they spilled into three overflow rooms.
The most controversial part of the bill is the elimination of collective bargaining for all public sector unions, the process where a school district, city, county or other entity with public employees meets with a union to negotiate a contract for those employees. Currently, Salt Lake City’s fire and police departments, and a number of Utah school districts are the only government entities that collectively bargain, Teuscher said.
Teuscher contends that the bill will actually give teachers and other public employees a greater voice, allowing for representation regardless of union membership.
“I believe eliminating this process is a good thing,” he said on Wednesday, telling lawmakers that in some cases a union has just 40% membership, despite negotiating on behalf of 100% of an organization’s employees.
That means some public employees “really don’t have any sort of voice in what their working conditions are going to be,” Teuscher said.
Plus, unions sometimes get involved in political campaigns, and could end up negotiating with the very politicians they supported, or didn’t support, which Teuscher said poses a conflict of interest.
But Teuscher’s explanation did little to quell opposition on Wednesday. For nearly 40 minutes, teachers, firefighters and police officers spoke against the bill, worried that it would erode their ability to negotiate for better wages, benefits and safe working conditions. Some said Teuscher was misrepresenting how unions operate.
“I’ll call a spade a spade; this has nothing to do with transparency and everything to do with breaking union leadership and unions in Utah,” said Zach Jeppson, a Salt Lake City firefighter and union president.
Jeppson said 95% of his fire department are union members. As for the other 5%, their voices are still heard.
“I would never turn down a call from anybody, regardless of whether or not they were paying union dues,” Jeppson said, noting that collective bargaining in his department resulted in better staffing, which subsequently led to “more people on a fire faster and reduced property damage, civilian injury and firefighter injuries.”
Bonnie Billings with the Utah Education Association, which represents about 18,000 teachers and other school employees around the Beehive State, cautioned the bill would “send the message to educators that they don’t deserve an effective collective voice in their profession, input on their salaries, benefits or working conditions or an effective voice in policies that impact their classrooms and schools.”
Chris Bertram, a retired deputy police chief for Unified Police, said he opposes the bill because it’s a “safety issue.”
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“As executives were making those decisions, financing things, making policies, we found out about problems in training and equipment and other things that were important that we wouldn’t have found out because of these unions,” said Bertram.
In addition to the ban on collective bargaining, the bill would restrict certain government resources from going toward union activity. That includes ensuring taxpayer funds won’t pay a public employee for the work they do for a union.
And unions wouldn’t get special exemptions for using public resources, like property — for instance, if other groups or people have to pay to use a public room or space, so does the union.
People who are employed by a union, but aren’t actually employed by the entity the union represents (for example, someone who works in an administrative position for a teachers union full time, but isn’t actually employed by a school district) would no longer have access to the Utah Retirement System.
And the bill would offer professional liability insurance for teachers, which in most cases is only currently offered through a union. Teuscher said that would cost each teacher between $110 to $150 annually.
Before it goes to the governor’s desk, the bill needs to be approved by the entire Senate.
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