Utah Governor Bans Collective Bargaining

Emil McLeod

A recent collective bargaining ban has been signed into law by the reactionary governor of Utah, Spencer Cox. Beginning on July 1^st, unionized public sector employees (teachers, firefighters, police, and transit workers, etc.) will be barred from negotiating contracts with their employer. While the collective bargaining ban covers all public sector employees, its primary aim is to combat teachers’ unions, as a part of the continued national drive by the ruling class to gut the Department of Education alongside other State social services and worker protections. Teachers’ unions are the most frequent users of collective bargaining, with the Utah Education Association being the largest public sector employees’ union in the state.

Ultra-reactionary president Donald Trump, with the support of monopoly-capitalists like Elon Musk, has been waging an aggressive campaign against “government inefficiency,” with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) serving as the bludgeon to knock through various departments of the reactionary State apparatus. Trump and DOGE have specifically targeted wings of the State that correspond to minimal social services that have historically been won by the masses through struggle. While Trump and Musk cite “bloat” and “inefficiency” in their desire to “clean up” the State bureaucracy, they leave the massive bloated repressive arm of the State untouched, as it is necessary for the maintenance of U.S. imperialism.

This has occurred outside of the legislative process, relying primarily on the Executive, which is assigned greater powers by itself and the Judiciary. This is part of the larger process of reactionization of the State in which more sweeping powers are concentrated in the Executive branch. Larger bureaucracies like DOGE are being concentrated around the Executive, armed with powers and duties that enable them to bypass the traditional liberal democratic process of utilizing the Legislative.

This process has been trickling down to the state level as well, with this latest signing of the collective bargaining ban in Utah being an expression of this process at the lower levels. The ban itself will set a legal and political precedent that other states will likely follow, tailing the lead of Trump’s attack on the Department of Labor and Musk’s attack on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Workers across various industries should expect to face increasing attacks on their rights, alongside the general trend of stagnating or decreasing wages. The times ahead will necessarily see workers organize themselves by varied means to fight back and reclaim their basic democratic rights and economic demands.

Photo: Utah Education Association holds a rally outside the Utah state capitol in protest of the bill banning collective bargaining for public employees. Retrieved from UEA website.

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