SALT LAKE CITY—A controversial bill prohibiting unions from collective bargaining passed out of the Senate on Thursday and is now headed to the governor’s desk. HB267 Public Sector Labor Union Amendments, sponsored by Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, will impact teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public employees in Utah.

“I want to make sure we get the message out about what this bill does and doesn’t do,” said Sen. Kirk Cullimore, R-Draper, the Senate Floor sponsor. “Every firefighter I’ve talked to says they don’t participate in collective bargaining. A lot of their concerns about what this bill does and doesn’t do really doesn’t affect what they’ve been doing all along anyway.”

“We look at policy,” said Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton. “Collective bargaining does not belong in the public workspace – it just doesn’t. I’ve talked to people all over the nation. Seven other states have done exactly what we’ve done today. It’s not new. It’s better policy not to have collective bargaining in this type of environment.”

“We are coming from a pretty different place,” said Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake. “We do believe there is a space for collective bargaining when it comes to public employees. I think that is the ideological difference.”

The concern is the message it sends to those workers, she said. “I’ve talked to some that are not members (of a union) but felt that they were being represented by unions regardless of whether they’re paying a membership fee or not.”

So by not having that opportunity, who is going to be helping them through that process of collective bargaining? said Escamilla. “I don’t see realistically that every employee is going to be working with a CEO or in this case, every superintendent of every school in the district on their salaries.”

So that’s one piece of the collective bargaining, she said. “And then the other part is there’s a lot of  questions about what is their purpose to be advocating for their group when they don’t have the ability to represent them in that very important piece which is their benefits and their salaries? I’m worried about the consequences and what’s going to happen.”

Look at the record of the legislature in supporting teachers, said Cullimore. “Look at the record of city councils and state school boards and local school boards who are the avenues to support their efforts and their wages. You know we appreciate all of our civil servants, particularly our first responders and our teachers.”

This does not signal any less of a commitment to them and their industries, he said. “It's simply saying to take it through the public path and we’re committed to doing that.”

That’s the way it’s historically been done, Cullimore said. “That’s the way it’s done right now for almost all of them anyway so it’s just really memorializing the current practice throughout most of Utah.”

“We didn’t collective bargain to give teachers a 4% WPE,” said Adams. “We didn’t collective bargain to give them the biggest salary increase of any state in the nation back after COVID. We didn’t collective bargain to give them all $6,000 pay increases. That was not collective bargaining and that’s what Sen. Cullimore is talking about. It’s not collective bargaining that’s doing all that.”

“I’ve weighed this back and forth,” said Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton. “Are we disorganizing unions? No. Are we disallowing people from joining unions? No. Are we disallowing a union to go represent an employee in any situation they choose? No. We’re not in any way. Now we get down to just a collective bargaining position and you’ve got a union negotiating against the taxpayer. That’s the bottom line in my opinion and that doesn’t work.”

Unions are still available and they can still advocate, he said. “They can still do all of the things I heard everybody tell me that they couldn’t do.”

“I think collective bargaining being available provides a mechanism for the unions to continue to work closely with those employers,” said Escamilla. “I realize that many of them do not utilize that but it’s a leverage they do have right now. That will be prohibited when the bill gets signed into law.”