Voices: When employers are willing to work with unions, the benefits for both are substantial. Utah’s history proves it.

Labor victories over the last decade, like the recent triumphs of Air Canada’s flight attendants and Park City’s ski patrollers, have increased interest among workers in unionization. They have also spurred a backlash.

In Utah, this was evident in the passing of HB267, which banned public sector collective bargaining. Legislators who support the anti-union position of wealthy employers like Vail Resorts and of special interest groups like ALEC and the Heritage Foundation appear determined to make it as difficult as possible for their constituents to form or join unions.

Instead, they should think far more about why ordinary folks want to do so. Certainly, workers are attracted to the higher wages and better benefits that come with union successes. But they also want to have an effective voice — one that is not ignored, which, as workers know, is all too often the case in workplaces. Why? Because having such a voice makes their jobs safer, more productive and more fulfilling. Perhaps surprisingly, it is union failures in Utah’s labor history that show this desire, and the workplace dynamics that produce it, particularly well.

On May 1, 1900, approximately 200 miners lost their lives in an explosion and its aftermath at the Winter Quarters Mine near Scofield. Less than six weeks earlier, a similar explosion at the nearby Castle Gate mine had caused extensive damage, though, miraculously, workers weren’t underground when it took place. The owners of the Winter Quarters mine, seeking to continue maximizing profits built on low wages and operating the mine unsafely, had ignored the warning to change their operating practices offered by Castle Gate.

Winter Quarters reopened less than a month later without safety upgrades. A new group of men desperate for work lined up to replace those who had perished. The company paid them less based on the assumption they were inexperienced and would produce less coal. These even poorer wages and the still unsafe working conditions at the mine compounded the strain caused by the memories of the dead. Knowing they could not individually negotiate with their bosses, who would just replace them if they made any demands, the miners met to discuss their situation. The unionists voted to strike after the company refused to negotiate with them and, two months later, the strike quietly ended. Most of the strikers were denied work. Those that were allowed to return had to accept a further reduced wage.

Eighty years later, 55 municipal employees in Park City decided to join the Utah Public Employees Association union after seeing their wages stagnate. Unionizing let them speak in unison, bolstered by the research and legal expertise of their parent union. Like other unionists, their goal wasn’t just to make the playing field more level in negotiations but also to improve the operation of their workplaces and the service they provided. The city manager refused to meet and, feeling they had no other option, the workers went on strike. The manager responded by firing almost all the city’s hourly employees and a third of the rest of the municipal workforce. An appeals board and the public supported the strikers, but the city council sided with the manager. Fired workers who sought to keep their jobs were forced to reapply without back pay. By the time they did, they had not drawn wages for nearly two months.

These two labor failures underscore a powerful truth: Workers in a range of workplaces want — and even need — to speak in a collective voice. Equally importantly, both Utah’s and other states’ labor history show that when employers are willing to work with unions, the benefits for both are substantial. To the north of Scofield in Butte, Montana, one owner of the city’s mines realized that paying good wages to unionized men and periodically negotiating a new contract with them provided a stable, well-trained workforce that improved operations. Due to his cooperative model, miners chose not to strike at his mines. During this period the mines in the city become among the most productive and profitable in the world.

In many ways, Utah’s public sector unions and the managers that worked with them have established a similar dynamic. Allowing workers a seat at the table brought expertise that made jobs and communities safer and improved public education.

Contemporary anti-union rhetoric has sought to erase workers’ desire to speak collectively and the sense of unions as partners in successful, fulfilling workplaces. Rather, anti-unionists claim that unions are inefficient and take away a worker’s ability to negotiate individually. This line of argument, akin to the actions of bosses at Winter Quarters and the city manager in Park City, is duplicitous. It is designed not to serve workers or improve workplaces. Rather, the motivation is to deflate labor costs in order to maximize employers’ paychecks, shareholder profits and a business’s attractiveness to venture capital — or to keep costs down by not paying public workers a fair wage.

Notably, however, these positions are not popular with Gen Z and, increasingly, many other Utahns who believe in a collective good and realize anti-union policies have enriched few at the expense of many.

Unions aren’t perfect, but they are dedicated to helping workers easily afford a home, food and childcare — and to giving them a voice at their jobs. One need look no further than the support for the referendum to overturn HB267 to know it is time for our legislators to do the people’s will: allow them to be in unions if they so wish.

Matt Basso is a labor historian at the University of Utah.

Sam Ivie is a history major at the University of Utah.

They are speaking as private citizens based on their research and study, not as representatives of the University of Utah.

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