Abstract
How do police and teachers unions affect attitudes towards labor policy? This study consists of a survey experiment featuring a news blurb about a fictional collective bargaining (CB) referendum in the respondent’s home state. Modeled after a real world attempt in Utah, respondents read about an attempt by their state’s legislature to ban collective bargaining for public sector unions followed by a citizen-led petition to revisit the bill via a referendum. Respondents read one of four versions of the article varying the inclusion of no endorsement, an endorsement by either the National Education Association state chapter or the Fraternal Order of Police chapter, or both. By randomizing the focus between police and teachers’ unions, the study will seek to determine whether these two unions provide an ideological signal that causes a change in participants’ attitudes about public sector CB, along with exploratory effects on attitudes towards a broader set of labor rights and unions as moderated by self-identified ideology. This study demonstrates how polarization on local policing and education unions and policy may translate to a change in voter attitudes on broader labor policy. This study also focuses on a unique policy setting where “strange bedfellow” unions across the ideological and partisan spectrum may successfully change policy by strategically targeting allied voters.