Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- Utah lawmakers plan to repeal a law banning public sector union bargaining.
- Union leaders express cautious optimism but stress ongoing negotiations with lawmakers.
- Repeal saves costs and removes referendum from ballot amid contentious redistricting efforts.
SALT LAKE CITY — Labor leaders expressed cautious optimism Monday as state lawmakers were poised to repeal a controversial law effectively banning collective bargaining for public sector unions.
But several insisted that the issue is far from settled, and promised to work with lawmakers going forward to craft policy around public labor organizing.
"I'm very happy with where we are, but it's not over," Scott Stephenson, executive director of the Utah Fraternal Order of Police, told KSL. "There's nothing to stop them from bringing another piece of legislation like this. So, I hope that we're part of the negotiations and part of developing language should a bill like this come up again, that would be beneficial to both labor and (the) Legislature."
Stephenson was referring to HB267, one of the most contentious bills from the general legislative session earlier this year. The bill would have prevented public sector unions from collectively bargaining with employers, added personal professional liability insurance for teachers and exempted public union staffers who aren't public employees from receiving taxpayer-funded retirement benefits.
Protect Utah Workers, a coalition representing both public and private employees, launched a referendum effort to repeal the law shortly after it passed, and collected 320,000 signatures, more than double the required number to place the issue before the voters next November.
Now, as lawmakers are set to gather to make changes to election law in light of a judicial ruling selecting a new congressional map for next year, they will also vote to repeal HB267, which would nullify the referendum.
The vote follows weeks of negotiations between union leaders and lawmakers. Both sides agreed to engage in a working group to debate labor policy going forward, though the sponsor of the bill said those conversations will likely not result in any new legislation in the upcoming legislative session, which starts Jan. 20.
Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, told KSL NewsRadio's "Inside Sources" Monday that he believed "misconceptions" led to the support for the effort to repeal his bill and said it's still worth asking: "Is collective bargaining a good thing for our state?"
"I think that's the time that we need to really have those deep conversations," he said. "What we were trying to do in the Legislature is to solve a real problem that exists where we have public workers who are not members of those unions and they don't feel like they have a voice in the process. They're not represented at the table. And so how can we bridge that gap by not taking away a voice from workers, which none of us want to see, but ensure that all workers have a voice?"
Repealing the bill would save both lawmakers and unions hundreds of thousands of dollars that would have been spent on a costly referendum campaign and signal a rapprochement between the parties, which have been embittered much of the year. Unions are celebrating the likely repeal as a policy win. And by removing the referendum from next year's ballot, lawmakers would neutralize a potent issue that could drive voters to the polls, even as they try to pass a constitutional amendment on redistricting.
"It's clear that the heated debate around these issues has created unnecessary division, which was never the intent," House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said in a joint statement Sunday. "Repealing the bill allows us to reset the discussion and move forward to ensure we get this right."
Union officials believe the strong support for their referendum helped to bring lawmakers to the table.
"I believe that they listened to the voters," Renée Pinkney, a social studies teacher and president of the Utah Education Association, told KSL. "They listened to the people. We had so many people sign our referendum to get it on the ballot, and I believe that they are looking to work to help us in terms of working together collaboratively."
Stephenson acknowledged it could have sent an even stronger message had the referendum passed, but said he supported the coalition's efforts to negotiate and accept the deal struck with lawmakers.
"I think somebody could connect those and say, 'Yeah, that would be a very powerful message' ... if it went to a ballot and it was still voted to repeal, but that's not the direction we're heading," he said.
Lawmakers to push back deadline to run for Congress
Tuesday's special legislative session has been in the works for several weeks as lawmakers have looked for a way to respond to a Nov. 10 ruling from Judge Dianna Gibson that selected a congressional map submitted by plaintiffs over one drawn by lawmakers. She called the Legislature's proposed map an "extreme partisan outlier," and adopted a map that draws a district primarily in Salt Lake County that leans Democratic.
The Utah Constitution gives lawmakers the power to adopt political boundaries, and top Republicans have criticized that ruling and a preceding opinion from the state Supreme Court, saying it is unconstitutional for judges or anyone else to approve congressional maps.
As lawmakers plan to appeal that ruling, they are expected to vote to extend the deadline for candidates to file to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. Under SB2001, candidates for each of Utah's four House seats can file candidate paperwork between March 9 and March 13 and have until March 13 to signal their intent to collect signatures to qualify for the ballot.
The filing deadline for all other races would remain Jan. 2.
Lawmakers are also planning to amend court rules of procedure in an effort to speed up the process of appealing Gibson's recent ruling, and to give the state Supreme Court "exclusive and original" jurisdiction over election-related cases.
Republicans in the Legislature plan to pursue a constitutional amendment next year to clarify their power to overturn or alter citizen-led ballot initiatives, but that issue was left off the agenda for Tuesday's special session. Instead, lawmakers will consider a resolution condemning the Supreme Court's "activist rewriting of the Utah Constitution" and Gibson's "disregard for the Utah Constitution" in adopting the current map.
