Utah Bans Collective Bargaining for Public Workers

A new law signed by Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah prohibits unions from negotiating wages and other terms for teachers, firefighters, police officers and all other public employees, joining just two other states that have banned collective bargaining in the public sector.

The law, which goes into effect on July 1, could have broader implications for the country’s labor movement, experts said. Its signing comes weeks after the new presidential administration effectively paralyzed — at least temporarily — the federal agency responsible for protecting workers’ rights as part of a broader crackdown on federal spending and regulations.

The bill, which was passed by a Republican-controlled Legislature, was signed on Friday by the Republican governor over the pleas of unions representing employees across the public sector, who protested at rallies and spoke in opposition during debate on the Legislature floor.

Federal law protects the collective bargaining rights of workers in the private sector, but determining labor law for public employees is up to the states.

That’s why bargaining rights for public employees vary by state, with some offering stronger protections for workers and unions and others restricting the kinds of workers who can unionize. In Texas, for example, only police and firefighters can collectively bargain. But only two states, North Carolina and South Carolina, had banned collective bargaining outright.

“It’s at the extreme end of the spectrum to have banned it for all,” said Sharon Block, the executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School.

The strongest opposition came from the Utah Education Association, the state’s teachers’ union that represents about 18,000 members. The organization had worked with lawmakers to arrive at a compromise, but the Legislature ultimately moved forward with a version of the bill the association had rejected.

In a statement, the governor said he was disappointed that “the process did not ultimately deliver the compromise that at one point was on the table and that some stakeholders had accepted.”

The education association called the law a “blatant attack on public employees and our right to advocate for the success of our profession and students.”

In a letter to the governor, the association’s president, Renée Pinkney, urged Governor Cox to veto the bill, saying it was intended to “silence educators and their collective voice,” diminishing not just their ability to negotiate salaries and working conditions, but also their say in policies affecting the classroom.

Proponents of the law in Utah argued that labor unions were inherently political and that allowing them to do collective bargaining on behalf of public employees presented a conflict of interest and could burden the taxpayer.

“So ultimately, if the government were to negotiate a really bad deal, at the end of the line it’s the taxpayers who have to pay the cost,” said Jordan Teuscher, a Republican state representative who cosponsored the bill, at a hearing.

Orly Lobel, the director of the Center for Employment and Labor Policy at the University of San Diego, said the Utah law was “a strong antilabor signal and is compounded with national pressures to reduce public spending on education and other public services.”

After Virginia partly repealed its law in 2020 prohibiting collective bargaining in the public sector, those in the labor movement had hoped for a favorable trend, Ms. Block said.

Now, Utah may have offset that.

The law, coupled with the Tump administration’s recent firings at the National Labor Relations Board, has caused concern, Ms. Block said.

“So private sector workers in this country now have no enforceable right to engage in collective bargaining,” Ms. Block said.

“And if you start adding on top of that, states taking away the rights of the public sector workers to engage in collective bargaining, you get to a point where that’s an incredibly serious threat to the labor movement,” she added.