Update Feb 6: The Senate moved today on the original House version of the bill. It passed on a 16-13 vote. The bill, which would ban collective bargaining for public sector unions, now heads to the governor's desk. Our original story continues below.
After a lot of spirited debate, potential substitutions – and delays – Utah lawmakers appear to be going back to their original plan to ban collective bargaining for public labor unions.
After proposing a change to allow collective bargaining if unions get enough employee support, Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore introduced a fourth bill substitute that would prohibit collective bargaining. He said the differences between this substitute and the version of the bill passed by the House, and voted on once on the Senate floor, are mainly technical fixes.
HB267 was close to the finish line when Cullimore introduced a substitute version that he hoped would appease the unions, who had come out in force to oppose the bill. That proposal would allow collective bargaining if a union passed a recertification vote every five years, meaning more than 50% of all employees voted for collective bargaining.
Cullimore pressed pause on the bill on Jan. 31 to give unions time to review the proposed changes with hopes they would then take a neutral stance.
While some unions, like the Professional Fire Fighters of Utah, have said they can live with the proposal, Cullimore told reporters on Feb. 5 that he’s not seeing the consensus he wants. Lawmakers are still receiving lots of emails from people opposed to the bill and he said they’re not getting the consistent response he had hoped for.
“I think [the ban] is reflective of the policy that most of the legislators that will vote on this want. And if there wasn’t consensus on the other stuff, then this is the vehicle that would move forward.”
When asked if threatening unions with a ban if they didn’t get behind the proposed compromise was a negotiating tactic, Cullimore said it wasn’t.
He added he’s more inclined to move forward with the fourth substitute, to end collective bargaining, because “we want to be done with this.”
The bill has sat circled on the Senate’s board this week. The body has not voted or discussed the substitute. Still, public labor union members have been at the capitol every day in case there was any action on the bill. The outcome will impact firefighters, police, educators, University of Utah health care workers and other government employees.
Cullimore said he floated the other substitute, “because we were getting indications that some of these groups were coming together and that there was going to be this consensus of neutrality, and that just hasn't crystallized.”
Senate President Stuart Adams said they thought there was some common ground but they haven’t seen any.
Leading up to the fourth substitute, Cullimore repeatedly told reporters he prefers the original ban but that he was trying to find a compromise. Adams said there’s enough support in the Senate to pass the ban.
The bill has to be voted on twice on the Senate floor. Before the substitute was public, the bill passed its first vote 18-10, with some Republicans joining Democrats against it. Other Republicans voted for it because of Cullimore’s promised substitute to soften the bill but said they were uncomfortable with the full ban because of how strongly their constituents opposed it.
Cullimore and Adams wouldn’t say when the Senate might vote on the bill.
The bill is “sucking up a lot of the oxygen in the room,” Cullimore said. So if they don’t get that consensus from stakeholders soon, he said they’ll just go back to the original prohibition and let it play out.
