The Iowa Capitol on Feb. 25, 2025. (Photo by Kathie Obradovich/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
The Iowa Senate Workforce Committee voted Tuesday in favor of legislation that would allow Iowans to ask courts to compel government employers to provide a list of employees in the bargaining unit.
Senate Study Bill 1172 would amend language in Iowa Code relating to public employees’ collective bargaining rights. Under current law, government employers must submit a list of their employees to the Employment Appeal Board (EAB) before recertification votes.
Recertification votes, in which workers are asked if they want to keep their union representation, must happen roughly 10 months before each negotiation period. If the list is not submitted by the employer, a vote is not held, and contracts are negotiated through existing representation.
The bill would make it illegal for an employer to fail to submit a list of employees, and would allow an Iowa resident to petition a district court for a writ of mandamus — a court order — to compel the public employer to provide a list to EAB. The legislation adds language on the process to get to this point, requiring EAB to issue a notice of intent to conduct an election to the public employer and bargaining representative, and would require the employer to submit a list of employees in the bargaining unit within 10 days.
The board would be required to publish a list of public employers that have been sent a notice but have not conducted an election at the conclusion of the 10-day period, with updates if they later submit a list. The measure was amended in committee to include a 60-day time limit for pursuing civil action after a public employer was found out of compliance with the law. Sen. Adrian Dickey, R-Packwood, said the change was to address concerns brought up by the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals, and Licensing.
Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, said in a subcommittee meeting on the legislation Monday that he supported the measure as a new attempt to address a problem with government employers, particularly schools, not submitting lists of employees to EAB in order to continue contract negotiations with the existing union representation.
“We can just say it openly: this is a teacher union issue,” Schultz said. “The teachers’ union moves folks into into administration. They’re still loyal to the union, so they they just simply don’t, they don’t submit the list.”
Schultz introduced a bill in 2024 that proposed decertifying public employee unions if a government employer does not provide the Public Employee Relations Board a list of employees within 10 days of receiving written notice of intent to conduct a certification election. This legislation received widespread opposition from public sector unions that said public employees could withhold off-hours work if the measure advanced.
The Schleswig Republican said he supported the measure as a way to address these same issues without bringing up the same concerns about disbanding unions over an employer’s failure to submit documents.
“I don’t know if it’s a better bill than it was last year, but I (think) the remedy is probably better, less easy to attack, or less offensive,” he said.
Dickey said Monday that after last year’s legislation was discussed, compliance with submitting lists jumped to 80% among public sector employers.
Four senators voted against the measure at the committee meeting Tuesday — Democratic Sens. Molly Donahue, Bill Dotzler and Zach Wahls, as well as Republican Sen. Charlie McClintock. Donahue, D-Cedar Rapids, said the legislation replicates an existing appeals process with EAB that does not require the time or cost that these court actions would incur.
She also said concerns about schools not submitting employee lists, or requiring school employees to be represented by a union, is an issue that has already been addressed through previous public sector bargaining laws.
“This is an unnecessary bill,” Donahue said. “The voice of the people, as was said at the subcommittee, is already heard because … this was mostly about education and not getting those lists. Well, in education, there is no requirement to be part of the union. Therefore, those who are in the union want to be, and those who don’t want to be in the union are not in it. And so their voice is already heard.”
Dickey argued “if the public sector employer is following the law, they will never know that this bill has been put into place,” but that the measure was needed because there were no penalties for public sector employers not following the law under the current system. He said that from 2020 to 2024, nearly half of the union elections scheduled to take place did not occur, prompting the need for legislative action.
He also argued against claims that the legislation was a “union-busting bill” measure.
“The fact is, this legislation has just as many opportunities to form a union as it does to dissolve one,” Dickey said. “For opponents of this legislation to complain that is too excessive or too expensive on the public sector employers — if they simply follow law, no cost will be occurred to them.”