People in the Senate gallery watch as senators vote on HB267, a bill that would ban collective bargaining for public employees, at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The Utah Senate narrowly passed a bill mired in controversy Thursday that strips public sector unions of their ability to collectively bargain.
Lawmakers who supported HB267 say it will give a greater voice to public employees, while protecting taxpayer resources; union advocates argue it will make public workplaces less safe, stripping unions of their teeth and making it more difficult to advocate for better working conditions.
The vote marks the end of two weeks of tense debate and a compromise that was ultimately abandoned, where lawmakers had proposed an amendment that would have allowed unions to collectively bargain if they could get enough support from all employees.
HB267’s sponsor in the Senate, Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, told his colleagues that he was discussing a compromise with unions during the first round of votes. Senate rules require each bill be voted on twice, and to win over his more skeptical colleagues on the initial vote, Cullimore promised he would work on an amendment.
But union support for the compromise “never materialized,” he said. So rather than work on a carve out, he pursued the original version.
After debate, the bill passed with a 16-13 vote. Seven Republicans — Lincoln Fillmore of South Jordan, Wayne Harper of Taylorsville, David Hinkins of Ferron, Anne Milner of Ogden, Daniel Thatcher of West Valley City, Evan Vickers of Cedar City, and Ron Winterton of Roosevelt, — joined the Senate’s six Democrats to vote “no.”
The bill now heads to Gov. Spencer Cox’s desk. A spokesperson for the governor on Thursday said Cox has been following the debate closely, and will continue to review the bill now that it passed. He did not say whether the governor supports the bill, and the statement did not rule out a veto.
HB267, sponsored by Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, and Cullimore in the Senate, is one of the most controversial bills to pass the legislature in recent years.
It would prevent public sector unions from collective bargaining — meaning unions that represent teachers, firefighters, police officers, road maintenance crews, municipal and county workers, and more — will no longer be able to meet with their employers to negotiate employment contracts.
Lawmakers say they’ve never seen such opposition to the bill. “I have received thousands and thousands of emails. And I have not received one that has asked me to pass this bill,” said Kathleen Riebe, D-Cottonwood Heights, on Thursday.
Scores of teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees spoke in opposition to the bill during committee meetings; a Utah Education Association petition gathered more than 13,000 signatures urging a “no” vote; a crowd of nearly 300 people packed the halls of the Capitol last week chanting “the union makes us strong”; and after the passage on Thursday, union representatives and advocates gathered outside of the Senate, some tearful, to express their anger.
“Utah is less safe now,” said Jack Tidrow, president of the Professional Firefighters of Utah.
Cullimore said the bill protects taxpayers. Government employees negotiating with government employees don’t always have the taxpayer’s best interests in mind when working on employment contracts, he said. “In the early times of our country, labor unions were never contemplated to be in the public sector,” he said on Thursday.
Cullimore and Teuscher also framed the bill as an attempt to give greater voice to public employees, not all of whom are represented by a union. If a teachers union only represents one third of the employees in a school district, it shouldn’t be able to negotiate employment contracts on behalf of everyone, they said.
Currently, just Salt Lake City’s police and fire departments, and a handful of the state’s school districts, have unions that engage in collective bargaining.
“More than 99% of all the unions that currently exist today do not do collective bargaining,” said Cullimore. “All the services that they provide their members, the services they provide employees, all the education and training that they do, will still be available.”
But just because a union doesn’t collectively bargain now doesn’t mean it won’t in the future. That was the argument from union representatives who have protested the bill since its first committee meeting.
Now that the legislature stripped unions of their ability to negotiate with employers, they fear that cities, counties, school districts and other entities that employ public workers won’t need to listen to their concerns, might feel empowered to keep wages stagnant, or impose policies that negatively impact working conditions.
“By having it available, it provides a mechanism for the unions to continue to work closely with those employers. I think that’s where the problem is,” said Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City. “I recognize that many of them do not utilize that, but it’s leverage they do have.”
In addition to changing contract negotiations, 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.
It would offer professional liability insurance for teachers to help with employment disputes, which in most cases is only currently offered through a union. Teuscher said that would cost each teacher between $110 to $150 annually.
People who are employed by a union but aren’t actually employed by the entity the union represents would no longer have access to the Utah Retirement System. For example, someone who works in an administrative position for a teachers union full time, but isn’t employed by a school district, wouldn’t be eligible for the state’s retirement benefits.
And unions wouldn’t get special exemptions for using public resources, like property — if other groups or people have to pay to use a public room or space, so does the union.
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