Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) could head into the GOP presidential primary against Donald Trump with a shiny new conservative belief: destroy public sector unions.
Republicans in the Sunshine State are moving ahead with it legislation designed to make it harder for government unions to collect dues and, well, exist at all. bill cleaned The GOP-dominated state Senate passed in Tallahassee last week, though some Republican lawmakers joined their Democratic colleagues and voted.
The bill has yet to pass the state House, which is also under solid GOP command, and must pass a committee before reaching the floor. DeSantis, who has led a wide-ranging attack on what he claims is “wokeism” in education, has publicly supported the bill because of its ties to teachers’ unions.
Unions and their Democratic allies have been able to maintain pockets of anti-jobs provisions for several years. But now they are worried – and furious – in advance of his rule.
Adding to the anger is the fact that the Senate Republicans included a carveout for the bill that protects the unions representing police, firefighters and corrections – which, unions are more likely to politically support Republicans.
In its current form, the bill would affect teachers, school support staff, bus drivers, janitors and sanitation workers, parks and library workers and others in the public sector whose unions tend to support Democrats.
“The purpose of the bill is to eliminate collective bargaining for public sector workers that the governor doesn’t like,” said Rich Templin, director of political and public policy at the Florida labor federation AFL-CIO. “Nobody is directly involved in asking for this. This is another long-standing policy that’s only been done for the governor in the White House.
Unions are right to find the mechanics of the bill troubling.
A key provision would prohibit unions representing teachers and other public sector workers from reducing dues through workers’ pay. It’s the main way workers pay their union dues today. They are also used to pay health insurance premiums, gym memberships and many other deductions that employers allow. Ending it would force unions to create new dues collection mechanisms, such as setting workers up for ACH transfers through banks.
“The purpose of the bill is to eliminate collective bargaining for public sector workers that the governor doesn’t like.”
– Rich Templin, Fla. AFL-CIO
Republicans have sought to ban pay cuts in several states in recent years, serving as “salary protection” for workers — teachers, in particular — against unions. He had success in Wisconsin, Michigan, Alabama and Indiana. A federal judge recently blocked Indiana law from taking effect after the teachers’ union was sued on the grounds of violation of the constitutional right of freedom of association.
The loss of the “dues checkoff,” as payroll deductions are known, is not always harmful to unions. But as the organizers once wrote in the Labor Notes publication, creating “The new layer is convincing“When trying to sign up workers for a union, even people who support their cause: “Not only do the staff members or committees have to move the workers, but we also have to convince them to give us their damn bank information!”
What sets Florida’s law apart is how the dues deduction ban works with a second anti-union provision.
Florida has long been a “right-to-work” state where no worker has to pay dues to a union, even if they benefit from a union contract. (At the entire US public sector now the right to work, thanks to the decision of the Supreme Court in 2018.) But in 2018, at that time-Gov. Rick Scott, Republican added another challenge for state teachers’ unions: If the number of dues-paying members in a bargaining unit falls below 50%, a process begins where the union can be “decertified,” or purged and its contract voided.
As part of the new proposal, the Republicans will apply the decertification threshold to public sector unions, and increase it from 50% to 60%. So as unions lose members due to pay cut bans, they could more easily run the risk of being decertified — unless they represent police, firefighters or correctional officers.
“Quite clearly this is political retribution,” said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, a union with more than 150,000 members. Of the union he carved out, Spar said, “I have a lot of friends in the union, but the union supports Governor DeSantis.”
HuffPost asked Republican state Senator Blaise Ingoglia, sponsor of the bill, whether the logic includes a carveout for certain unions that happen to lead conservatives. The speaker pointed to a Senate committee hearing where Ingoglia said police and firefighters “put their lives on the line every day.”
“He might be at work and not know if he’s coming home at night,” Ingoglia said March 16. employees and union reps … I’m going to have a hard time telling law enforcement who works overnight from 12 to 8 that they need to stay up and meet their union reps at 11 o’clock to hand over their checks.
HuffPost asked a follow-up question: If this bill is really about “protecting” workers’ wages, don’t our heroes deserve the same protections as other workers in the bill? A spokesman did not respond.
SOPA image via Getty Images
A spokesman for DeSantis would not say whether the governor supports the carveout for police and firefighters, suggesting HuffPost steer the question to the bill’s backers in the legislature. At a press conference where he promoted “wage protection,” DeSantis talked about it only in relation to unions.
“Because this law is still subject to the legislative process (and therefore different iterations), the governor will decide on the merits of the bill in its final form if and when it is passed and sent to the governor’s office,” said spokesman Jeremy. T. Redfern.
It’s not clear how the law’s proponents arrived at specifically 60% as the appropriate threshold below which unions must meet in order to recertify with the state. After all, there is a certain logic to the current 50% marker, on top of which members pay dues as the majority.
Spar, from FEA, said he understood how 60% were selected.
“We know him [DeSantis] has called the staff around the country to find out where all the unions are in membership, and they found they were all over 50%, with many in the upper 50s and quite a few over 60%, “said Spar. “So why set the threshold of 50?”
Fighting with teachers unions is nothing new for Republican figures. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were celebrated on the right for their attacks on public sector unions, though neither could ride their anti-union record to the GOP presidential nomination.
But in the case of Florida, labor leaders believe the dues-killing investigation is wrapped up in DeSantis’ crusade against what he calls “awakening ideology“in schools. He has banned “woke” textbooks, fought with the College Board over African American studies and attacked diversity, education and inclusion initiatives in higher education.
Spar said the teachers’ union is in the crosshairs because the governor sees it as a line of defense against his education agenda, including at the university level.
“The governor has made it clear that he doesn’t like you, he will come after you, are you Disney, [prosecutor] Andrew Warrenschool board member or in College Board,” Spar said. “The real reason we’re dealing with this bill is because teachers and staff and professors … are the people who will come together and speak on behalf of children and communities and families.”
“The governor has made it clear that he doesn’t like you, he’s going after you.”
– Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called Florida’s law “dangerous attack” on collective bargaining rights in an email to HuffPost. Weingarten is concerned about DeSantis’ education bill and agenda in general he traveled to a union rally in Miami it’s saturday He said DeSantis issued an “authoritarian edict.”
“We have all seen Gov. DeSantis abandon the conservative notion of limited government, but in this session, he seems fixated on stripping away freedoms and silencing those who have raised doubts about the policy,” Weingarten said of the bill.
Templin, from the Florida AFL-CIO, said unions are trying to mobilize against the bill to prevent passage in the House. But he has discussed how he will deal with the new system if the bill is signed and survives an almost-inevitable court challenge.
Unions may share resources to create a new system for the collection of dues if they cannot deduct directly from workers’ salaries. But Templin said other aspects of the legislation will also be problematic, including the requirement for new annual audits that unions must undergo. According to Templin, some local unions are so small that the audit would be an unreasonable burden on staff.
Spar said that Florida Republicans can talk a lot about eliminating red tape and cumbersome regulations, but they seem happy to create more for unions they don’t like.
“This is an incredible amount of government overreach and intrusion,” he said. “We’re a private and democratic organization … It’s basically saying that teachers and staff and others can’t make their own decisions and they need big government to make those decisions.”