Source: In These Times
by Caroleine James
“On a cloudy mid-April day, a large white box truck pulled up outside the Salt Lake County clerk’s office. Inside was a pallet of bankers boxes, each filled to the brim with paper packets. Since 6 a.m., at clerks’ offices across Utah, teachers, firefighters and other public sector union workers had been lugging in cartloads of referendum petition signatures. After Scot Baskett, a Salt Lake City firefighter, helped deliver a final load, he and his fellow organizers gathered to sing ’Solidarity Forever’. Some raised signs that read ’Protect Utah Workers’, the name of their 20-union coalition. Others raised their fists. The moment, Baskett says, was ’joyous’. It was the culmination of a months-long fight against House Bill 267, a ban on collective bargaining for public workers. By gathering signatures, organizers paused the ban — and might get it overturned.” (07/07/25)