State employees will no longer be able to unionize, as Gov. Jan Brewer today issued an executive order undoing an earlier order signed by her predecessor that cleared the way for state workers to join unions and meet regularly with agency heads.

The move has left labor unions, which have recruited state employees heavily in recent months, fuming. Scott Washburn, the director of Arizona operations for the Service Employees International Union, said Brewer’s decision to rescind an earlier order signed by former Gov. Janet Napolitano was a reflection of Republican distaste for organized labor.

“They don’t like unions. They don’t want employees to get together,” he said.

In December, only weeks before she left Arizona for a job on President Barack Obama’s cabinet, then-Gov. Napolitano signed an executive order giving state workers meet-and-confer status.

The meet-and-confer process established under Napolitano’s executive order allowed a secret-ballot election to be called if any union could demonstrate at least 30 percent of an agency’s employees desired to be unionized. Representation would be approved only if a majority of all agency workers voting in the election agreed The employee representative and the agency director would have met at least once a quarter.

The order specified that the objective of meet-and-confer was to provide agency heads with “information on employment and personnel issues and to aid in informed governmental decision making.” The agency directors and union representatives were permitted to discuss ways to improved employee efficiency, cost-saving measures, employee morale, discipline, work schedules and safety issues.

Wages and compensation were not specifically included in the list of topics that could be discussed.

But that order was undone today by Brewer’s order, which reaffirmed Arizona’s status as a right-to-work state, which means workers here do not have to join a union. Paul Senseman, a spokesman for Brewer, said today’s order would not affect employees in the Department of Corrections, who were granted meet-and-confer earlier in 2008. But he didn’t close the door on revisiting that agreement at a later date.

“It only applies to the December executive order,” he said. “However, the Governor’s Office is reviewing other executive orders.”

When Napolitano gave meet-and-confer status to all executive agency employees in December, Republicans quickly condemned the action and said the Democratic governor was paying back her political allies.

In the 2008 elections, the three unions most active among state workers – SEIU, the Communication Workers of America and the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees – each gave more than $200,000 to the Arizona Democratic Party. In addition to that, SEIU formed an independent expenditure committee and spent $141,000 supporting Democratic candidates for the Legislature.

Some Republicans called on Brewer to rescind the order immediately upon taking over as governor.