PHOENIX—A Maricopa County Superior Court judge has knocked an anti-union referendum, which if passed would have virtually put public sector unions out of business, off Arizona ballots this fall.
The measure, pushed by state Republican legislative leaders, was so broad that it violates the state constitutional requirement that a ballot initiative stick to one topic, Judge Gregory Como ruled.
His decision cheered both the Arizona Education Association, which was the target of the Republicans and their referendum, HCR2040, and the state’s Fire Fighters union, whose members are known to be more pro-Republican.
HCR2040 would not only have banned public funds for private school vouchers—as its sponsors argued—but also robbed public sector unions, including the AEA, of all functions, legal analysts said.
“While our state’s educator shortage reaches crisis level with no end in sight, our elected leaders spent precious hours of this year’s legislative session cooking up HCR2040 to target educators, police and firefighters and undermine our ability to advocate for ourselves and our students,” AEA President Marisol Garcia said after Como’s late-July ruling.
She urged voters to remember in November who dreamed up HCR2040 and vote them out of office, replacing them with “pro-education” lawmakers.
“I can’t use the words I would use in a firehouse, but we are against it,” state Fire Fighters President Dan Freiberg said of the GOP referendum in talking with local media.
The referendum language said: “This state or any political subdivision of this state may not negotiate with a labor organization an exclusive representation agreement, collective bargaining agreement, memorandum of understanding, contract, or other agreement regarding the terms and conditions of employment.”
There’s “no ambiguity” in that ban, Como wrote. He rejected arguments from GOP legislative leaders that he should read the ban in the context of a larger battle between the GOP and the teachers over reforming and regulating another GOP favorite: Arizona’s current taxpayer-paid vouchers for parents of private school kids.
The planned referendum “would both ban school districts from using resources to support unions and also ban all state and local governments from contracting with any unions” about anything, legal analysts told local media
Had voters passed such language, Arizona would become even worse than a right-to-work state. Instead, it would be, at best, a “meet and confer” state, like Texas.
Most Texas public sector unions—notably the teachers—have the right to “meet and confer” with local governments and school boards over wages and working conditions but can’t reach contracts. All they can do is file grievances when the governments violate their own government-set employment standards, however weak those are. The exceptions are police associations and firefighters’ unions.
AEA showed its power several years ago by forcing the all-Republican state government to better fund the schools via a statewide “Red for Ed” campaign. AEA’s drive, including massive rallies in the state capital, Phoenix, was one of many such drives by teachers’ unions around the U.S. The teachers, parents, and students, most of them in “red” states, demanded legislatures and governors fund the schools adequately rather than give more tax breaks for the rich.
The Arizona “Red for Ed” drive threatened to shut most if not all of Arizona’s public schools before the governor and legislature yielded and raised the money.
And in West Virginia, where “Red for Ed” began, the GOP-run state government also wanted to force teachers to pay more into their pension plans, while not raising benefits. Led by the West Virginia Education Association and the state’s Teachers/AFT affiliate, the whole state responded in outrage Every single public school in West Virginia shut for more than a week until lawmakers caved.
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