Members of the UA Local 140 Plumbers, Pipefitters, HVAC&R union march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Salt Lake City on Saturday, March 15, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
A coalition of union advocates is off and running in a 30-day sprint to collect enough signatures to place a referendum on Utah ballots over controversial legislation restricting collective bargaining for public sector employees including teachers and first responders.
Signature gathering began Saturday as the Protect Utah Workers coalition launched efforts “from Logan to St. George,” according to a news release.
That included downtown Salt Lake City, at the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade that also serves as a celebration of private sector labor unions.
As the parade reached the end of its route at Olympic Legacy Plaza in the Gateway Mall, clipboard-carrying volunteers darted between the crowd lining the road and mingling in front of the stage, talking over the parade announcers as they looked for spectators interested in signing the petition.
Quick to sign was Mark Ciullo, of Sandy, who had watched in alarm as HB267 narrowly passed the legislature and was signed by Gov. Spencer Cox last month. The bill spurred protests, thousands of messages urging lawmakers to vote against it, and calls for the governor to veto it.
In the name of saving taxpayer dollars, HB267 prohibits unions representing government employees — teachers, police officers, firefighters, municipal workers and others — from engaging in collective bargaining with their employers — who are also government employees — to negotiate pay and working conditions.
Ciullo had followed news of the referendum push, eager to sign the petition and hoping to bring volunteers to his neighborhood to seek signatures. While he hadn’t known there would be canvassers at the parade, he was quick to take the chance to put his name down as his children enjoyed the face painting booth, then waved his wife over to do the same.
“I had actually looked online and things beforehand to see, like, where I could go to actually sign it, because I totally feel like our government is not listening to the people, and they need to listen to the people. We need to stop this nonsense,” Ciullo said. “I know it’s also really hard to actually get this referendum done and get this on the ballot. And so, yeah, sign me up.”
Per Utah Code, once the first signature is collected, organizers have 30 days to gather signatures from 8% of the state’s total active voters, and in 15 of Utah’s 29 Senate districts. If they succeed, HB267 will be placed on voters’ ballots, where they could vote to overturn it.
The coalition is shooting to gather about 200,000 signatures, which is above the minimum threshold, but leaves room for error if some of the signatures are deemed invalid by the lieutenant governor’s office. Organizers plan on submitting the signature packets by April 16. By late June, the coalition says it will know whether the effort was successful.
Ciullo is a product manager for a health care company, and his wife is a physician. While they aren’t directly impacted by the bill, Ciullo emphasized the importance he places on supporting the state’s public servants.
“It’s amazing to me that we want to claim that we care about our teachers and firefighters, and then we do something like this that’s completely against what I believe is good for them, with their bargaining rights and everything else, I just don’t get it,” Ciullo said.
The bill takes effect July 1.
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