In the end, it wasn’t even close.
Labor groups had 30 days to get 140,478 signatures to put a referendum on the ballot asking Utah voters if they want to repeal a new law barring public employee unions from negotiating contracts with their government employers.
They ended up with 251,590 valid signatures, making it the most successful signature-gathering effort in state history, according to the lieutenant governor’s office, racking up nearly 100,000 more names than the previous record set by the 2018 medical marijuana initiative.
The labor groups, calling themselves Protect Utah Workers, didn’t just surpass the statewide total. They also met specific targets for signatures in 23 of the state’s 29 senate districts, well above the 15 districts required to qualify for the ballot. They fell short in districts on the northern and southern ends of the state.
While opposition groups still have the opportunity to convince voters to remove their signatures, the margins are so overwhelming that two organizations have acknowledged the futility of the effort and conceded the repeal question will be on the ballot.
Earlier this week, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson issued an order blocking HB267 — the bill banning collective bargaining by public employee unions — from taking effect, pending the outcome of the vote. Most likely, voters will decide in 2026, although the governor or the Legislature could conceivably call a special election to coincide with municipal elections later this year.
Republican lawmakers pushed through the ban on public employee unions during the past session. It mainly impacts teachers, but also affects some police and fire departments, health care workers, public works employees, librarians and others.
Backers of the change argued that when unions get concessions during negotiations, they come at the expense of taxpayers. They also contend that, because unions only represent a portion of the public employees, they shouldn’t have an outsized voice in contract talks.
Labor groups pushed back, flooding committee hearings and staging large-scale protests at the Capitol. Lawmakers said they were looking for a compromise unions could support, but when they failed to get unanimous consensus from labor groups, they pushed through an outright ban.
Gov. Spencer Cox signed the bill but later said he’d “said from the beginning I didn’t like the bill. It wasn’t something I was interested in, not something I would run.”
While the referendum can’t be officially certified for the ballot until next month, groups on both sides pivot to mounting public relations campaigns to try to sway voters’ views on the law.
A group that wants to keep the ban in place, calling itself Utahns For Worker Freedom, has received $602,000 from the Club For Growth, a conservative organization based in Washington, D.C.
Protect Utah Workers raised $2.2 million for the signature-gathering efforts and has added more than $700,000 since, a large majority of it coming from the National Education Association and other teachers’ unions.
All told, Protect Utah Workers submitted 324,726 signatures to county clerks three weeks ago, but an unusually large number of them — 73,136 or nearly 23% of them — were rejected for various reasons, according to the lieutenant governor’s office.
A legislative audit of the signature validation process for candidates conducted last year found the rejection rate ranged from 8% to 12%.
Salt Lake Tribune reporter Emily Anderson Stern contributed to this story.
