"Champing at the bit": Utah unions launch referendum campaign against ban on public sector collective bargaining. 

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• Benjamin Wood
• AFT Utah president Brad Asay takes questions from the press at the Utah Capitol on Wednesday, March 5.

CAPITOL HILL—Utah labor unions announced the launch of a referendum campaign on Wednesday that, if successful, would overturn recently-approved legislation banning collective bargaining in the public sector.

Representatives for teachers and school support staff, health care providers, teamsters, first responders, law enforcement and other public and private employee associations met with their attorneys outside the Lieutenant Governor's Office, prior to filing formal paperwork to begin the signature-gathering process.

"This is for worker’s voices, this is for working families," said Brad Asay, Utah chapter president for the American Federation of Teachers. "It’s been overwhelming, the support we’ve had out there from the public."

The bill, HB267, was among the most controversial of the 2025 session, which ends at Midnight Friday. Under the law, which has already been signed by Gov. Spencer Cox, public entities like cities, school districts and libraries would be prohibited from formally engaging in collective bargaining with worker representatives. The bill takes particular aim at Salt Lake City and the Utah Education Association, though a broad array of labor organizations and representatives would be impacted, while significantly undermining the overall standing of organized labor in Utah, a virulently anti-union state.

The law places a high bar on citizen-initiated legislation, including referendums, requiring a large number of signatures with sufficient geographical distribution in a narrow, roughly one-month-long window. The last major referendum campaign was in 2020, when a broad coalition of Utahns worked together to rescind a hike in grocery taxes, which ultimately led lawmakers to call a special session and repeal their own bill, rendering the referendum campaign moot before it was tested on the public ballot.

On Wednesday, referendum organizers were confident in their ability to gather public support.

"Everyone’s ready to go to work," Asay said, "and we’re going to have tens of thousands of people out there getting those signatures because they feel so strongly."

And Renee Pinkney, president of the Utah Education Association, said that voters both deserve and want a chance to weigh in on whether to strip public employees of their bargaining rights.

"The public is on our side," Pinkney said. "People are just champing at the bit."

During the legislative session, HB267 was briefly held up while the sponsors entertained negotiations on a potential compromise, which never materialized. During conversations with the press, Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and other members of Senate leadership often suggested that public sector unions are fundamentally inappropriate. They argued that, unlike the private sector, public employees do not have the threat of bankruptcy if their demands push their employer too far on salaries and other concessions.

Asked for comment on the referendum campaign Wednesday, Adams noted that part of the legislative process includes the ability of the public to weigh in on bills, including after they pass.

“ I encourage voters to thoroughly research the issue at hand to make informed decisions.” Adams said in a prepared statement.

Matt Thompson, a vice president at large with the Salt Lake Valley Law Enforcement Association, said that lawmakers' distinctions between public sector and private sector unions are "ridiculous." He said public employees are members of the taxpayer community themselves and have no incentive to drive cities and public agencies into debt.

"There has always been an underlying importance of the taxpayer dollar," Thompson said. "We, as employee representatives and unions, have that conversation with our people and explain, 'this is the limit of what can be cone'."

Thompson said that police departments around the state are struggling with staffing shortages and tight budgets. But unions, he said, play a critical role in making sure that while resources may be tight, they are spent in the way that on-the-ground employees know to be most effective and efficient.

"That ends up with a better outcome for our community," Thompson said. "Better response times. Better safety measures."

Later on Wednesday, the Lt. governor ruled that unions must wait until after the session adjourns before filing their referendum paperwork. Organizers said they disagreed with the ruling, but that it does not alter their intention to mount a campaign to repeal HB267.

"The Legislature has already made it exceedingly difficult to qualify a referendum for the ballot, and this decision magnifies that challenge," the Protect Utah Workers coalition stated. "Every day we have to gather signatures counts, but this will not stop us."