LABOR UNIONS
union appears safe for now, Barber is angry on behalf of thousands of other teachers who might lose union representation.
“It’s extremely disappointing to me that my colleagues are in that position because of an unfair law that’s been passed. They have a new challenge in front of them,” said Barber.
Many teachers don’t fully realize that the only reason they “have a defined work day, have a duty-free lunch, have time to plan during their work day” is that contracts were negotiated by unions, she said. Persuading members to pay union dues in a Right to Work state is a “daily challenge,” she added.
When the bill was being debated last year, sponsor Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a Spring Hill Republican, said the point of his proposal was to foster more engagement between membership and unions, and that unions would become stronger in the end, as more members paid dues and became involved.
Even though the Manatee teachers union gained a significant number of teachers paying dues, Barber said it does not make the group feel any stronger.
“I do not feel that having a guillotine over the union’s head is an incentive to be stronger and more organized,” said Barber. “It’s a threat to our folks.”
OCALA UNION COUNTING DOWN DAYS
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1205 has represented more than 400 municipal workers in the City of Ocala since 2013, a group including crime scene technicians, electrical system operators, park workers, code enforcement officers and others.
When the union filed its recertification with the state in mid-January, just 41 out of 465 members were listed as paying dues of $47 a month. The tiny number does not just put the bargaining unit at risk, it also might well kill the union.
“To be honest with you, I’m very sad. We have members there that need union representation,” said Nelson “Lanny” Mathis Jr., a business manager of the IBEW union who has been a member of Local 1205 for over four decades.
Organizing a campaign to gather signatures for recertification, then running a campaign for a future vote is simply not practical when it comes to deciding how and where to allocate resources for a local that mostly represents private-sector workers. Especially not when the union might have to repeat the process again next year and the year after that.
“I think there’s no great buy-in to reorganize, and I’m just afraid that there’s nothing we can do,” Mathis told WLRN. “I don’t believe it was ever directed at people like the City of Ocala. I think those guys got caught in the crossfire.”
The justification presented by Republican lawmakers who passed the law — including Gov. Ron DeSantis — was that SB 256 was intended to “protect” the paychecks of workers. Yet the law carved police and firefighters out of those “paycheck protections.” Those unions represent some of the Republican governor’s most vocal supporters.
Teachers unions, on the other hand, have emerged as one of the most vocal opponents of DeSantis and the Republican-dominated government. The governor specifically mentioned the impact on teachers unions at the news conference when he signed the law.
Mathis said Ocala city officials have told him they intend to honor the collective bargaining contract through September, when it expires. When it comes time for negotiating the next contract, the workers simply might not have representation asking for higher pay or better benefits, he lamented.
A total of 6.1% of
Florida workers were unionized in 2023, a slight uptick from the previous year. Florida’s overall unionization rate reached as high as 8.7% of its workforce in 2000, the first year the federal government began tracking the data, and it has slowly wobbled downward ever since.
If any significant portion of the at-risk union members lose representation through decertification this year, it could represent a steep and abrupt drop in Florida’s union membership rate.
With the new union law in effect, Mathis fears the working class in Florida faces a bleaker future.
Workers who are unionized make significantly higher wages than those who are not, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They also have significantly higher insurance and retirement benefits.
“Last year was the worst I’ve ever seen. I’ve been involved in politics since 1980, in one form or another,” said Mathis. “It used to be they’d hide stuff from you, they do it behind your back, they do it under the table. They don’t even give a damn anymore. They’re just right out there in the sunshine, man.”
“It has literally gotten to the point where they know we can’t stop ’em,” he said.
AN EARLY BUT TROUBLING PICTURE
The new law’s impact on public sector unions is just now coming into focus, but even then it is an early picture.
Public-sector unions have been required only to send the state information about how many members pay dues since last October, when that section of the law went into effect. But different unions have different dates when they need to send in the paperwork.
Since that’s the case, WLRN’s findings cannot reflect paperwork that has yet to be submitted, from February through September 2023. The number of unions affected will only grow. While in theory some unions might be able to rally their members, it seems likely the fallout will be devastating and increasingly worse for labor.
The Association of Federal State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) declined to be interviewed for this story, but dozens of locals represented by the group are already at risk of being decertified. Nationally, AFSCME represents over a million public-sector workers, including tens of thousands in Florida.
In a statement to WLRN, the group said it remains committed to protecting the “rights, freedoms and voice” of public-sector workers.
“We are still exploring all options on how best to do that, local by local, as we continue the implementation and unintended consequences of this antiworker law,” the union said. “We look forward to ensuring that AFSCME members continue to be a strong force for quality public services and economic equality in the years to come.”
In the state lawsuit filed to push back against the law, the union claims that the law “destroys the foundations upon which Florida is a ‘Right to Work state,” where employees that
benefit from collective bargaining agreements are not required to pay union dues.
Before the 2023 law, even if workers did not pay dues, so long as a voting majority agreed to be represented by a union in contract negotiations, the union survived.
The state has not yet responded to an amended complaint filed by AFSCME in December 2023, but the union failed to temporarily block the law before it went into effect.
‘EVEN MORE TARGETED’ THAN WISCONSIN’S PRECEDENT
The AFSCME union was created in 1932 in Wisconsin, the state where publicsector collective bargaining was born. But a broad 2011 law in that state was frequently cited in interviews as paving the way for Florida’s new publicsector union law.
That landmark 2011 Wisconsin law, known as Act 10, shifted the attitudes of many state governments toward public sector unions. Yet Act 10 required only an annual majority vote of total members to keep a union alive, not for any specific number of members to pay dues.
Laura Dresser, a labor economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told WLRN that SB 256 appears to be stronger than Wisconsin’s law and predicted that its impact might be more widespread and immediate.
“In some ways it feels even more targeted — to undermining the ability of unions to continue existing in Florida,” said Dresser. “That 60% dues bar feels really stringent to me.”
After the 2011 bill was signed into law by Republican Governor Scott Walker, the number of workers represented by unions in Wisconsin dropped
dramatically. Between 1989 and 2011, a larger percent of Wisconsin workers were represented by unions than the national average. Ever since
2012, the state has dropped well below the national average, according to a study done by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The former union stronghold state has seen the largest drop of union membership in the nation since 2000, in large part because of Act 10.
An estimated 100,000 people showed up at the state capitol to protest the 2011 proposal, owing to the state’s history as a longtime union stronghold. Police and firefighter unions were exempted by the law, but many protested in solidarity with fellow unions.
On top of requiring an annual vote on continued representation, the Wisconsin law also banned union dues from being directly taken from paychecks for most publicsector unions, a step Florida has taken. Act 10 also narrowed the scope of what unions could bargain for, limiting it to basic pay. Florida’s law does not limit what unions can negotiate. Wisconsin union members were also forced to pay a greater share of retirement benefits, something Florida’s law does not touch.
Overall, the impact has been that Wisconsin public-sector unions have been perpetually put on the back foot, struggling to survive and to stay relevant in political decision-making, said Dresser. The impact has been that real wages for public-sector workers like teachers have significantly dropped.
Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, boast that the measure saved taxpayers billions of dollars.
“Public-sector unions were deeply undermined and became much less relevant inside work sites
and inside the state political discussion,” said Dresser. “That’s what happened in Wisconsin; that’s what I expect may come to Florida.”
A major difference between Wisconsin and Florida is that unlike Wisconsin, Florida explicitly protects the right to collectively bargain in the state constitution. Dresser said that could prove a crucial element in legal challenges to the law.
“What does it mean to offer people a right to collectively bargain when the rules around the union you have that would carry the voice that would enforce or actualize that right are so constrained that they can’t operate?” asked Dresser. “There’s a deep tension there about how you can make that right, real.”
Templin, of the AFLCIO of Florida, called the law a “fundamental trashing of the constitutional rights of Florida’s workforce.”
For unaffected unions, like those for law enforcement and firefighters, those collective bargaining rights remain unchanged. The Town of Bellaire, in Pinellas County, only listed 35% of officers paying dues in its recertification, but that union is under no threat of being decertified.
Likewise, the Town of Indian Shores, also in Pinellas, only listed 33% of members paying dues. That union is also completely safe from decertification.
Under SB 256, any public sector union that is in the process of being decertified needs to hold a new election to show a majority of eligible members still want to be represented by the union. If the vote fails, the union is fully decertified. Affected unions could be forced to hold these votes every single year if they do not hit 60% of eligible members paying dues, just to stay alive.
No recertification elections have been called just yet, but the Florida government is allocating additional resources to prepare for a huge uptick in these elections. In Gov. DeSantis’ proposal for the 20242025 budget, he lists nearly $1.5 million in additional funding for the Florida Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC) — taking it up to $6,517,821.
‘ROLLING WITH THE PUNCHES’
Calhoun County, in the Florida Panhandle, was the very last of Florida counties to organize a teachers union, in 2016.
Last year, state data shows 51.7% of teachers there paid union dues; after the law went into effect, that number dropped to 32.78%, calling the union’s future into question.
Brian Gay, the Calhoun union president, hung up the phone on WLRN when contacted to ask about
how the union might respond, and he said he did not want to be further contacted.
Citrus, Columbia and Highlands County teachers’ unions were past the 50% threshold, but under 60%, setting the decertification process in motion. The unions represent teachers on the Gulf coast, in North Central Florida and in South Central Florida.
“We’re rolling with the punches,” said Christian Gallery, the president of the Citrus County Education Association. “We’re still doing the work that needs to get done. We actually got one of the highest raises in a long time, even as we were fighting the recertification battle back in October.
But we’re still doing what we need to do.”
The Citrus union represents 1,170 teachers, along with 627 non-instructional staff in a separate contract. The teachers’ union had 51% of members paying dues, while noninstructional staff only had 29%, according to public filings. Both bargaining units already gathered and submitted the needed signatures to run a recertification election.
“Was that annoying? Was that a process that I would have rather not had to do, and everyone involved would have rather not had to do? Absolutely. But we got it done,” he said.
Gallery said hopes are high about keeping the union alive. He is counting the amount of members paying dues one by one, listing four added duespaying members in a single week as a signal of progress towards hitting the 60% threshold.
In the big picture, said Gallery, public employees are losing rights enshrined to them in the Florida constitution. The state constitution was written in 1968, which happened to be the year Florida teachers went on strike statewide, demanding higher pay. It was the nation’s first statewide teacher strike.
The basic deal reached in 1968, said Gallery, was that teachers would agree to constitutional provisions banning public employees from striking, so long as they explicitly gained the right to unionize and collectively bargain. The 2023 law represents a retreat from that bargain, he said, and warned it could well lead to labor unrest.
“If people feel that teachers should maintain their status of not being allowed to strike, then they should also maintain their status of unfettered collective bargaining,” said Gallery. “I think people need to remember that, and act accordingly.”