Salt Lake City (AP) – The legislators in Utah presented a draft law on Thursday, which, according to experts, would introduce one of the most restrictive work laws of the country, since the Republicans try to contain the political influence of unions, the teachers and other public service experts serve.
The GOP proposal would prohibit collective bargaining in the entire public sector-education, transit, law enforcement and more. It would prevent unions from negotiating better wages and working conditions on behalf of the employees.
Many educators who operate the most frequently in the state regard the draft law as a possibility for the Republicans to weaken teacher unions and clear the way for their own educational agenda.
“The damage to the draft law is borne by the teachers of public schools who live and work in every single electoral district,” said Sara Jones from Utah Education Association. “It sends out the message that educators do not earn a collective voice in their profession, have no influence on their salaries, working conditions or social benefits, or have no say in politics that affects their classrooms.”
Teachers’ unions are among the sharpest opponents of Republican politics in Utah and other states in which the legislators have tried to abolish diversity, equality and inclusion programs, to expand school election vouchers and to restrict the employ of toilets for transgender and participation in sports activities in schools.
The unions tend to be liberal, which in the Republicans believes they make them unsuitable to represent teachers with conservative political views.
“We need that all voices are heard in the teaching profession, and not only those who agree with the union and their political views,” said Cole Kelley, a Republican in the state of Education from Utah, who teaches High School in American Fork.
The member of the state of Jordan Teuscher, a Republican from South Jordania who supports the draft law, said that collective agreements often restrict employees from participation in their own contract negotiations and only allowed communication between the union representative and the employer. The bill creates a system in which employers could work with all employees when it comes to concerns about the workplace, he said.
The measure was adopted by the GOP of the House of Representatives of the GOP with 11 to 4 votes and received the support of some of the state’s most powerful Republicans, including the spokesman for the House of Representatives, Mike Schultz.
State employees could continue to join unions as part of the draft law, but the unions could not officially negotiate their name.
President Donald Trump has supported measures that make it complex for workers to organize themselves unionized, but his populist appeal helped the Republicans to steady growth among the union members in the 2024 elections. From the private sector, said John Logan, a job expert at San Francisco State University.
“The Republicans see the main obstacle to the redesign of public education in the teacher unions, as they would like,” Logan told The Associated Press. “You want to have the working class on your side, but the unions of the public sector have no employ for you. From an ideological point of view, they are just an obstacle. “
Logan said Utah’s draft law was “quite extreme” and would make the state one of the most restrictive states of unions in the public sector alongside North Carolina and South Carolina.
Collective negotiations have been banned in the Carolinas for all jobs in the public sector for decades. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the two states have had the lowest percentage of union members in the country in the past two decades, with South Carolina currently being 3 % in the lowest place.
In Texas and Georgia, only the police and fire brigade have the right to negotiate. This was not possible for them according to Utah’s draft law, which also met with the resistance of firefighters who feared that they could not work for adequate occupational safety without the support of the unions.
