Jordan Deffenbaugh, a labor representative with American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 65 based in Sioux Falls, S.D., joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss a situation unfolding in Union County that he said is clear evidence of why workers need union contracts with just cause protections.
Two Union County sheriff's deputies, both members of a newly formed bargaining unit still in the middle of their first contract negotiations, were fired by the new Union County Sheriff three weeks after he won his election. Their supposed offense: having a yard sign supporting the other candidate on their property.
Deffenbaugh described Council 65’s active response campaign involving a petition, planned rallies, appeals to the governor and attorney general and an unfair labor practice charge. The incident is already galvanizing interest in union organizing across Southeast South Dakota and pushing the reactivation of the Sioux Falls Regional Labor Federation.
Jordan Deffenbaugh is not a career union man. He grew up in South Dakota, in a fifth-generation dairy-farming family in the western part of the state. His father was a home builder in Sioux Falls. After years of doing community advocacy work focused on housing and a failed campaign for a seat on the Sioux Falls City Council, he was approached by his mail carrier, who asked if he had ever considered becoming a labor rep. Deffenbaugh applied, got the job and started with AFSCME Council 65 in June 2025.
He covers approximately 13 jurisdictions across East River South Dakota, including the bargaining unit that just became the center of one of the most straightforward illustrations of why workers need union contracts he has encountered in his first year.
The deputies in the Union County Sheriff's Office organized in November 2025. They were still in their first contract negotiations when the Sheriff, who had won his election just three weeks earlier, terminated two of the deputies on June 23. The termination letter cited South Dakota's at-will employment law as authorization for the terminations and offered no specific cause.
Deffenbaugh said the reason that emerged publicly is that the two deputies had yard signs on their property supporting the sheriff's opponent. They did not campaign at the office, hold signs on the road or do anything beyond exercising political speech as private citizens on their own land. Three weeks after their candidate lost, they were fired.
Just weeks before the terminations, Deffenbaugh said the county's lawyer was sitting across the bargaining table from the union reps. arguing that the contract did not need just cause language because South Dakota is an at-will state. That conversation, followed by the firings, made the case for just cause protections more directly than any argument Deffenbaugh could have constructed.
Deffenbaugh said the firings are not the first time concerns have surfaced about the Sheriff’s conduct in Union County. A former 911 director filed a lawsuit alleging she was terminated after the sheriff learned she had married her wife, with reasons added after the fact. Since news of the terminated deputies went public, Deffenbaugh said he has been receiving calls from Union County residents describing additional situations he is not yet ready to discuss publicly, but said the story is becoming a deeper well than it first appeared.
AFSCME Council 65 is not waiting for the situation to resolve itself. Deffenbaugh said the union’s response includes a petition drive, planned rallies at the county commission, appeals to the governor and attorney general of South Dakota, the two officials with authority to hold the sheriff accountable, and an unfair labor practice charge. He does not expect the sheriff or the county to back down easily, but believes the campaign is built for a sustained fight rather than a quick resolution. He also described a successful precedent from earlier in his tenure: when the city of Vermilion tried to terminate a worker for living slightly outside an on-call radius, a media blitz and city council mobilization led to the termination being dropped entirely.
Deffenbaugh said one unexpected effect of the Union County case is that it is sparking organizing conversations across his jurisdiction and beyond. Workers who had not previously considered joining a union are approaching him with questions about the process. He is explaining what it means to organize, whether their workplace structure qualifies and how to build toward a worker majority. He said he would not be surprised if the Union County situation becomes the starting point for a broader surge in Southeast South Dakota.
He is also part of the effort to reactivate the Sioux Falls Regional Labor Federation, drawing on archives from the past century of organized labor in the region. Those earlier organizations, he said, had the infrastructure, committee structure and redundancies needed to activate quickly when a situation demanded it. Building that capacity will require several years of work, he said.
South Dakota's union density is approximately 2.7 percent, compared to roughly 35 percent nationally during the peak years of the 1950s. Deffenbaugh said there is a lot of ground to recover and situations like Union County are exactly the kind of situation that helps workers understand what union membership actually means for their daily working lives.
More information on AFSCME Council 65 is available at afscme65.org.
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