Florida Republicans pursue anti-union wishlist of billionaire-funded think tank

Republican state lawmakers have filed a quartet of bills for Florida’s 2025 legislative session targeting public sector unions that appear to be drawn from legislation drafted by an anti-union think tank.

Legislation filed last week by Florida Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, Rep. Dean Black and Sen. Randy Fine — all Republicans — represents the latest effort by at least a handful of Florida Republicans to undermine labor unions in Florida that represent thousands of state and local government employees, from classroom teachers to public utility workers, 911 dispatchers and librarians.

A 2023 law, similarly backed by out-of-state think tanks, has already dealt a major blow to public sector unions. The law prevented union members from paying union dues through a paycheck deduction (the most convenient way to do so) while also requiring a higher percentage of them to pay dues in order for the union to remain certified (that is, valid in the state’s eyes).

Because of Florida’s right-to-work law — an anti-union policy initially championed by Southern segregationists in the mid-20th century — no worker can be forced to pay union dues, even if they benefit from having union representation. Unions representing cops, firefighters and correctional officers, which generally endorse Republicans for office, were exempted from Florida’s 2023 union regulations — mostly.

Its impact has been broad. So far, state records show that more than 100 unions have been wiped out since the 2023 law was fully adopted, affecting more than 68,000 public employees in Florida who are no longer covered by contracts guaranteeing things such as pay raises, just-cause protections, and workplace safety rules. Maintenance and other workers at the University of South Florida saw their jobs privatized, without having any say in the matter, after the dissolution of their union.

“They can just get their wages cut, their benefits cut, and all protections whatsoever, just overnight.”

“People had the protection of a union contract, the CBA [collective bargaining agreement], behind them one day and the next day it’s gone,” Todd Provost, a union official with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 606, explained to Orlando Weekly in a recent interview. “They can just get their wages cut, their benefits cut, and all protections whatsoever, just overnight.”

But apparently that’s not good enough for several Republicans in the state Legislature who are now pushing to take the 2023 “union killer” law further.

The latest bills filed for consideration during the 2025 legislative session (HB 1387/SB 1766 and HB 1217/SB 1328) would make it harder for public employees to form a union in the first place, and even harder for them to maintain the union they already have.

If approved by Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, the legislation would:

• Gut voluntary recognition: It would get rid of an option that allows public employers to voluntarily recognize a union, provided the union can demonstrate a majority of workers are in support of joining. This process, known as voluntary union recognition or a “card check,” allows workers to avoid going through a lengthy election process and to avoid potential intimidation from employers that would prefer to remain union-free. Several red states have sought to undermine this process in recent years.

• Ban “duty release”: This is a practice that allows union members to take paid time off to engage in certain union activities, including political advocacy and attending union meetings.

• Majority vote: require that a majority of workers vote in favor of forming or recertifying their union in order for the union to prevail in a union election. Currently, winning a union election requires a vote of support from a majority of workers who vote — not the number of workers, total.

• Delay re-organizing efforts: prevent workers from re-forming a union for at least 12 months following the decertification or dissolution of their former union.

A review by Orlando Weekly also found that several provisions of the 67-page proposal are near-identical to a proposal originally pitched by an out-of-state, anti-union group called the Freedom Foundation.

Founded in Washington state, the Freedom Foundation is a right-wing think tank that describes itself as a “battle tank that’s battering the entrenched power of left-wing government union bosses who represent a permanent lobby for bigger government, higher taxes, and radical social agendas.”

One of its chief lobbyists in the U.S. South, Russell “Rusty” Brown, is a former “union avoidance consultant” (aka a union-buster) appointed to the U.S. Department of Labor by then-President Trump during his first term in the White House. Brown testified in favor of Florida’s 2023 anti-union law ahead of its passage, and has admitted the Freedom Foundation was involved in its drafting.

An analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy found that the Freedom Foundation — a 501(c)3 registered nonprofit that’s not required to disclose its donors — has received significant funding over the years from right-wing organizations like the Bradley Foundation (known for backing efforts to defund and get rid of unions) and the Charles Koch Foundation (affiliated with the late billionaire, who had a reputation for anti-union endeavors).

The group is also an affiliate of the right-wing State Policy Network, a network of right-wing think tanks that peddle similar anti-union bills to state lawmakers elsewhere.

Andrew Spar, a former music teacher and president of the statewide teachers union, described the attacks on public sector unions as embarrassing. “We want our union, and we want this nonsense of making us jump through hoops to keep our union and to negotiate fair pay, fair benefits and fair working conditions to stop,” he told Orlando Weekly. His union, the Florida Education Association, represents more than 150,000 teachers and other school staff statewide.

Although teachers and higher-ed faculty were widely perceived as the target of the 2023 law, so far, all K-12 teachers unions have remained intact. Unions representing thousands of adjunct faculty, in addition to state-employed attorneys, nurses, and other local and state government employees haven’t fared as well.

“It’s just embarrassing that in a state where people are struggling with rising costs, where people are struggling to pay their bills, to pay their rent, to buy groceries — that there are some in this Legislature who continue to focus on making it harder for those people,” said Spar.

Heading off any kind of strike activity

One of the more prominent similarities the new legislation has to the Freedom Foundation’s draft is a provision calling for a significant increase to fines that public employees unions — and union officials — can be forced to pay if union members participate in a strike action.

Under Florida’s state constitution, strikes by public employees are strictly prohibited. The same is true in at least 36 other states, as of 2023. Public employees who do strike in Florida, including teachers and cops alike, could risk losing their jobs. Unions representing them can be decertified and fined for each day workers are out on strike.

Currently, each union officer, representative or agent can be fined between $50 to $100 a day for each calendar day of a strike. The union itself can be fined up to $20,000 per day for a strike action if the employer files a lawsuit to enjoin the action and a judge subsequently issues an injunction.

This latest proposal would more than quadruple these fines, allowing union officials to be fined anywhere between $300 to $600 each day of a strike. The union itself could face a fine of up to $120,000 per day for violating an injunction.

A staffer for the Freedom Foundation explained in an annotated Word document, obtained by Orlando Weekly last year, that this increase was intended as an adjustment for “inflation.”

“These amounts haven’t been adjusted for inflation since the state collective bargaining law was passed in 1974,” wrote Maxford Nelsen, director of research and government affairs for the Freedom Foundation, in a document emailed to Sen. Ingoglia on Oct. 16, 2023. “The amended amounts are rounded from the [Consumer Price Index].”

Sen. Ingoglia did not respond to a request for comment from Orlando Weekly about his legislation, or its similarities to the Freedom Foundation’s proposal. Neither did Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, the House sponsor, who is better known for sponsoring Florida’s six-week abortion ban in 2023.

The motivation for the change is unclear. Public employee strikes in Florida are extremely rare. From what we can tell, the last major strike by local or state government workers in Florida was a statewide teachers’ strike in 1968, spurred by familiar issues such as frustration over underfunded schools and low teacher pay.

Public employee strikes have been illegal in Florida since 1959. Still, thousands of teachers reportedly participated in the illegal 1968 action.

“Teachers across the state really just had enough,” Joanne McCall, a former president of the statewide teachers union, told WFSU in 2018. “So they gathered at what is the Citrus Bowl now in Orlando — the old Tangerine Bowl is what it was called then — and they had this big rally.”

The Freedom Foundation, which recently lost an effort to dismantle the Miami-Dade County teachers’ union, did not respond to a request for comment on why they believe it’s important for Florida to update its fines for illegal strikes, beyond this burning need to adjust for inflation.

A spokesperson did tell us, however, that they believe the similarities between their proposals and the legislation filed by Florida lawmakers signals that the state agency that enforces public sector labor laws — the Public Employees Relations Commission — concurs with their ideas.

“The fact that the bill closely mirrors the Freedom Foundation’s draft underscores that overhauling the labor relations statute … was a key priority for the agency,” Arielle Brown, vice president of communications for the Freedom Foundation, told Orlando Weekly over email.

While Florida hasn’t seen a public employee strike in decades, they have popped up in other states that similarly ban such actions. Teachers in three Massachusetts school districts for instance took a risky move by striking last November, an action fueled by demands for smaller class sizes, paid parental leave and a “living wage” for paraprofessionals.

That action came six years after teachers in GOP-controlled West Virginia similarly walked out on strike in 2018, in violation of state law. The illegal strike action, birthing the so-called Red for Ed movement, spread to other red states, too.

“Educators in Arizona, Kentucky and Oklahoma went on illegal wildcat strikes to fight against the poverty wages and chronically underfunded schools that were resulting in both intolerable working conditions and learning conditions,” wrote social studies teacher Jacobin Goodwin in a 2023 article for The Progressive about the Red for Ed movement.

“Since then, the movement has seen ebbs and flows. But that’s the nature of organizing. There is no straight line of progress, but instead waves that slowly and determinedly wash against the shores — little by little changing the landscape.”

Although strike actions aren’t common in Florida — even in the private sector — the proposed legislation appears to be preemptively disincentivizing such actions from taking place.

According to a new report from labor researchers at Cornell University and the University of Illinois, the U.S. broadly saw more than 350 work stoppages in 2024 alone, including a strike involving thousands of AT&T workers in Florida and across the U.S. South over a lack of progress made in contract negotiations. Dockworkers at Port Tampa Bay also went on strike last year, along with other dockworkers along the East Coast.

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This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2025.