HB267 seeks to bar government employers from recognizing a union “as a bargaining agent.”

The head of Utah’s largest teachers’ union is warning that a bill proposed in the Utah Legislature could hurt public workers — teachers, law enforcement, firefighters, public transit drivers and more — and the people they serve.

“The bill is silencing our voice in terms of trying to improve working conditions, and those working conditions are our students’ learning conditions,” Renée Pinkney, president of the Utah Education Association, said Tuesday, the opening day of the 2025 legislative session.

The bill, HB267, is aimed at banning collective bargaining across all of Utah’s public sectors. The bill would not prevent public employees from joining or forming unions, but it would prohibit government employers from “recognizing a labor organization as a bargaining agent.”

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, said rather than “silencing” public workers, as Pinkney put it, his proposed legislation “will enable more participation in the negotiation process and provide better benefits for our public employees.”

It would do that, Teuscher explained, by “opening up the free market” and allowing other people and organizations to have a seat at the negotiating table.

‘What this bill does’

Jeff Worthington, president of the Utah AFL-CIO, shared Pinkney’s concerns, and predicted HB267 would produce a negative “trickle-down” effect were it to pass.

“Wages will become...

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