It’s still fewer than three months since Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 47th United States president. Like so many Americans, I’ve been on an extended fast from most news coverage — even the reliable, well-sourced and trusted kind. I’ve been checked out, foggy and watching countless hours of Netflix and classic feel-good movies.
Had I even wanted to follow Trump’s daily meltdowns, I doubt I could have kept at it. The tantrums. His executive orders pandering to the most angry and hateful among us. His mendacity with the news media and the American people. It all makes my head split.
I’ve begun wondering: Is there even one way to show my opposition to leaders who are obsessed with turning back time in our country? How much longer can I wring my hands, cluck and whisper, “What the hell?” at nearly every news headline?
So last week I stopped by the Murray headquarters of the Utah Education Association. I entered the building, ready to sign the petition that hopefully will allow voters to repeal HB267. During the 2025 Utah Legislature, the bill went by the innocuous title of “Public Sector Labor Union Amendments.” It’s a good bit uglier in its depth than the name implies.
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HB267, which Republican legislators embraced with glee and the governor quickly signed, kills collective bargaining for public employees represented by unions. The new law is set to take hold on July 1 and will ban a public employer (think state, county, city government agencies and professional associations) from recognizing a union as a bargaining agent for its employees’ wages, benefits and working conditions.
This includes a wide swath of workers who work 24/7 as police officers, firefighters, some city workers who repair broken water and sewer lines, plow the roads, collect our trash and generally keep us safe and protect the public health.
This includes public school teachers. We entrust our children to them for six or more hours a day. In Utah, school teachers are ever so gradually getting better pay and benefits. It’s still not enough. Collective bargaining is essential to increasing their compensation and keeping good teachers.
There’s more. The law will also exclude “new labor organization employees” from participating in the Utah Retirement System. If this law stands, and if you choose to work for a public labor union without working for the entity it represents, you can’t even save for your future with the state’s designated and highly rated retirement system.
How whacked is that?
As I followed the debate and protests around this awful bill, my mind kept going back to high school civics classes, which was more than a minute ago. My favorite teachers taught that famous quote — “all politics is local.” The late U.S. House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill often gets credit for that quote. He apparently didn’t make it up. But he gave it legs.
And so it came to me. I can’t do much about Donald Trump. Or Elon Musk. Or Robert Kennedy Jr. But I can act locally. Local and state issues are granular. They are right in front of us. I have the power to make change. We all do.
I signed the petition to allow HB267 to go before voters on the 2026 ballot. This is a chance for a bad law to get a fair process and a vote for and from the people. I had not reckoned that after signing my own name, a volunteer would gently persuade me to take a batch of petitions with me.
Now, instead of gazing out my kitchen window lost in anxiety, I will be showing up, asking friends and associates to use their voices and their votes. This effort must yield, in 45 days, 140,748 valid signatures, representing 8% of registered voters statewide, as well as 8% of the registered voters in at least 15 of Utah’s 29 counties. Of course, Utah has the toughest rules for ballot initiatives in the country. But what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
I hope you (of course you are a registered voter) will sign this petition. Tables are set up in many public places with friendly volunteers to explain the process. I’ve talked with energetic college students walking in grocery store parking lots seeking signatures. It’s a grassroots effort at work.
I found my activist soul again. Turns out, it’s right here in my backyard.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Holly Mullen
Holly Mullen is a freelance newspaper journalist. She has been a reporter, editor and columnist with The Salt Lake Tribune. She lives in Millcreek with her standard poodle and two cats.
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Correction, March 31 at 8:45 a.m. • A previous version of this op-ed was corrected to clarify that public labor union employees who don’t work for the entity it represents would no longer have access to the Utah Retirement System.
