Florida sees its first major purge of public sector unions following passage of Republicans’ anti-union law

Thousands of public workers in Florida lost union representation last month, a result of anti-union legislation signed into law last year.

Public records show that in January alone, at least 30 public bargaining units for city, university and non-instructional school employees were decertified by the state.

Decertification means the bargaining unit is no longer recognized as valid, and any current contracts they’ve negotiated with employers — covering things such as grievance procedures and negotiated pay raises — are no longer enforceable.

A maintenance technician at the University of South Florida in Tampa, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation, told Orlando Weekly on Tuesday that he hadn’t heard yet that his union — AFSCME Local 3342 — had been decertified. But, as a smaller local in a right-to-work state, he knew it was at risk.

Along with other union members across the state, he’s helped fight off policies pushed by state politicians and Big Business lobbyists over the past decade. They’ve sought to undermine unions by making it harder for members to pay union dues, and by requiring public-sector unions to have a certain percentage of dues-paying members to remain certified.

Those changes took effect last year under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was then preparing an ultimately unsuccessful campaign for U.S. President. Now Florida’s labor unions are beginning to see the results of this cruel demonstration of power.

This marks the first major purge of public sector unions in Florida since the passage of the so-called “paycheck protection” law

Florida’s Senate Bill 256, touted as a “paycheck protection” measure by DeSantis in 2023, was broadly opposed by union members, many of whom traveled to Tallahassee to speak against it last spring — and was only publicly supported by organizations that have historically sought to undermine public sector unions.

Under the new law, public employee unions are required to have a dues-paying membership of at least 60% of employees the union represents, which is no easy organizing task. Because Florida is a right-to-work state, workers in a union job don’t have to become dues-paying members in order to be covered by a union contract, making it more difficult to convince workers to voluntarily support their union and reach this threshold.

Opposed by the state Legislature’s Democratic minority, the law also prohibited a decades-old practice of allowing union members to have union dues deducted automatically from their paychecks — a ban that working Floridians themselves characterized as government overreach.

According to records kept by the state, at least 33 bargaining units have been decertified since the law took effect, most of them formerly represented by AFSCME — a labor union representing thousands of city, state and school employees in Florida.

City employees represented by AFSCME, who help keep their communities running in places like Jacksonville, Pensacola, Bradenton, Sebring and Sanibel, all saw their unions decertified last month.

So did blue-collar employees for Volusia County’s public school system and non-faculty employees at some of the state’s largest public universities, including USF, the University of Florida, Florida State University and the University of Central Florida.

This marks the first major purge of public sector unions in Florida since the passage of the law, modeled after similar “paycheck protection” policies pushed by the billionaire-backed American Legislative Exchange Council and enacted in states like Wisconsin, Arkansas and Kentucky. A handful of states in the U.S. South, as well as Arizona, ban public sector collective bargaining altogether.

Notably, the decertification of various local unions in Florida in recent months was not followed by a recertification election, which would have given workers a say in whether to fight to keep their unions.

‘I wish them all the best’

Under Florida’s new union law, public sector unions must report their membership numbers and financial information to the state annually by a registration renewal deadline that varies from one union to the next.

Those that fall below the newly mandated 60% membership threshold can file a petition with the state’s Public Employees Relations Commission, the agency overseeing public sector union matters, for recertification.

A petition for recertification must contain signatures from at least 30% of eligible employees, confirming that they want the union to represent them. Then, an election takes place. If a simple majority of workers vote in favor of union representation — 50% + 1 vote — the union stays. If 50% or fewer vote in favor, then the union is decertified.

AFSCME, according to state records, did not submit recertification petitions for at least 30 of their bargaining units, including some that were first established back in the 1970s.

Unions have a full month to petition the state once they’ve been informed by PERC, currently led by three DeSantis appointees, that they are at risk for being decertification.

According to PERC, the AFSCME locals representing the bargaining units at risk decided not to do this, and were then given an additional two weeks to explain why. According to state records, “The Union did not file a response.”

Several of these AFSCME unions, largely representing blue-collar workers and administrative staff in schools and municipal departments, were first established decades ago, around the time when Florida’s public sector workers were guaranteed the right to form unions and bargain collectively in 1974.

Union rights were something Florida workers fought hard for — as were child labor protections, which are this year being heavily targeted by lawmakers. More than 25,000 Florida teachers staged the nation’s first statewide teachers’ strike in 1968 over underfunding and low salaries. This prompted state leaders to explicitly ban public sector workers from striking, in a show of just how terrified of unions they were.

AFSCME Local 850, which represented largely blue-collar employees for Volusia County Schools — such as bus drivers, food service workers and security guards — was first established in 1980, according to state records. It was officially decertified on Jan. 16, 2024, after failing to get even moderately close to the newly required 60% membership threshold.

Cathy Knowles, the former president of Local 850 in Daytona Beach, told Orlando Weekly in a phone call Tuesday that the local simply didn’t have the people to keep the union certified.

Out of 1,500 workers the union represented in the school district (not counting teachers or support staff belonging to a different union), just 150 (or 10%) were dues-paying members at the time of decertification.

The maintenance worker at USF, who’s been active with his union for over a decade, said they similarly only ever reached 8–10% membership density at their peak. (Again, in a right-to-work state, all of the employees reap the rewards of the contract that the dues-paying members support and the union reps negotiate.)

“When you don’t have people [who] want to sign up to continue going, I mean, there’s not a whole lot we can do,” Knowles shared candidly, in reference to her local.

A spokesperson for the Volusia County school district told Orlando Weekly they sent an all-staff email to their employees on Friday, Feb. 2, informing employees that the school board planned to continue to honor the decertified union’s contract through June 30, 2024.

“We recognize the importance of maintaining positive employee relation [sic] and we are taking the following steps to ensure that you continue to have a voice in our day-to-day operations,” the email reads.

The district “will continue to offer the same terms and conditions of employment as you presently receive such as leave, pay and benefits,” the email continued. Up until June 30, that is.

The University of Central Florida was even less generous in their communications to employees. In an email sent to staff formerly represented by AFSCME on Wednesday, UCF’s Chief Human Resources Officer Maureen Binder told employees that, as of their union’s decertification on Jan. 22, the terms of their existing union contract “no longer apply to you.”

“Moving forward you will be guided by the policies and regulations of the university which are designed to uphold the rights and responsibilities of all employees,” the email read. “Your role and contributions continue to be highly valued, and we are dedicated to supporting you throughout this adjustment period.”

Binder cheerily signed off on the memo with the university’s signature phrase: “Go Knights, Charge On!”

Knowles, the former union president in Volusia, enumerated a number of things in their school district’s contract that employees may lose after its expiration — including longevity pay, a perfect attendance bonus, a uniform allowance — all things that the union had negotiated through the collective bargaining process over the years.

It’s not easy to come to terms with the loss. Knowles, for her part, told Orlando Weekly on Tuesday she planned to turn in her resignation notice to AFSCME that day.

“I wish them all the best,” she said, of the Volusia County school staff.

The fight continues (for some)

Locally, AFSCME unions representing state employees in Orlando and clerical and administrative employees at the University of Central Florida were similarly decertified last month.

So, too, were bargaining units representing thousands of state workers elsewhere throughout Florida, including at the State Capitol, who would have been required to organize and gather signatures from literally thousands of their co-workers in order to simply petition for recertification.

State records show AFSCME does plan to fight for their blue-collar bargaining unit at UCF, first certified in 2004 — representing maintenance, landscaping and electrical workers at the university, among others.

In November 2023, AFSCME submitted a recertification petition to continue representing those employees, and similarly petitioned for 18 other bargaining units across Florida that had reported membership levels below the 60% threshold. Several of those petitions, however, have already been dismissed by the Commission for being “deficient” — e.g., submitting cards that name the wrong union — while some are set to head to elections.

AFSCME, like a number of other unions, publicly announced plans to fight the new law last year after its passage, and joined other unions in suing the state, arguing the law was unconstitutional. (So far, these suits have been tossed or delayed in the courts.)

“Make no mistake, today is not the end; it is the start of the next chapter in our fight for justice, equality and freedom at work,” AFSCME Florida President Vicki Hall said in a statement last May.

But there have been other, internal difficulties, too. Torrence Johnson, a former regional director for AFSCME Florida in the Jacksonville area, told Orlando Weekly that AFSCME Florida was placed under administratorship by the international union last year. The passage of Florida’s new anti-union law was declared an emergency situation.

In August, most Florida-based staff, including Johnson, were laid off, leaving the smaller local unions with less support and fewer resources.

The maintenance worker at USF, whose local union was one of those smaller units, admitted it was “frustrating” to see all of this go down. “[AFSCME] probably didn’t have the manpower or resources to cover every local in the state and bring in reinforcements to sign everybody,” he guessed.

The international union told Orlando Weekly in a statement that AFSCME remains committed to protecting Florida workers’ “rights, freedoms and voice on the job.”

“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 anti-worker law,” the union’s statement read, adding that AFSCME has kept a line of communication open with their member leaders about the options they and their co-workers have.

“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”

“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,” the statement concluded.

Two other unions that represented a number of city employees in Naples and Port St. Lucie, affiliated with GSAF/OPEIU, were also decertified last month. A union representing Holmes County employees, represented by the Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union (RWDSU), first certified in 1984, was similarly decertified in December.

City workers in Orlando and some other municipalities are currently represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which politely declined to comment on the status of their public sector bargaining units. None of their units so far, according to state records, have been decertified as a result of the new law.

Others, including many teacher and faculty unions that have faced a litany of attacks from the state Legislature, have continued organizing to save their unions and their contracts.

Robert Cassanello, a history professor at UCF and president of his university’s faculty union, told Orlando Weekly that despite challenges they’ve faced in organizing — with many faculty still teaching remotely, or leaving the institution altogether — their local is “slowly growing.”

They’re not at the 60% threshold that’s now mandated under law, but they plan to petition for recertification through their parent union, the United Faculty of Florida, and have already collected the signatures they need to move forward with the process.

“This was intentional on the part of the Legislature to hamper us with a 60% density threshold,” Cassanello told Orlando Weekly, noting that he doesn’t know of any other state with a threshold that high. It’s “ridiculous,” he said. “And to do it in less than a year is even more ridiculous.”

A targeted attack

None of the bargaining units decertified so far represented teachers or college faculty, even though education unions were broadly considered the primary targets of last year’s law.

Notably, the law largely exempted unions representing cops, firefighters and correctional officers (although they’ve run into issues with the state over PERC’s interpretation of the law, too). Unlike teachers unions, the cop and firefighter unions generally back the campaigns of Republican politicians, who in turn argued that these first responders belong to a “special risk” group that deserves special privileges.

Lawmakers also eventually granted a partial carve-out for transit unions, after labor leaders warned that failing to do so could jeopardize local communities’ ability to secure federal transit grants.

Teachers unions represent a sizable chunk of the unionized public sector, covering more than 100,000 educators and support staff. And there was beef when union president Karla Hernandez, head of the United Teachers of Dade, ran as the running mate of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist during the 2022 election.

Plus, there was precedent. Teachers unions were singled out by former Gov. Rick Scott years ago, when he mandated a 50% membership threshold specifically for teachers unions in 2018.

The Florida Education Association — the parent union of most of the state’s teachers unions — told Orlando Weekly last month that at least 22 of their local education unions, including a bargaining unit for support staff in Orange County Public Schools, had membership densities below 60% at the time they submitted their annual registration renewal paperwork to the state.

The United Teachers of Dade, a massive union representing over 25,000 school staff in South Florida, is one of them. A labor union in Volusia County, Volusia United Educators, is currently fighting its own school board over the issue, facing accusations of falsifying information given to the state.

The new ban on payroll dues deductions has also made it harder for unions to keep the members they already had. The policy required unions to develop and pitch alternative dues collection systems to members, which is no easy task. By making it harder for union members to pay dues, the new law has effectively made it even more difficult for unions to comply.

One of the groups that helped draft last year’s bill — a Washington-based think tank called the Freedom Foundation — also sent out mailers to public employees, urging them to stop paying their dues. The group is financing a fake union, dubbed the Miami-Dade Education Coalition, that was formed with a mission to replace UTD.

Known for trying to convince union members across the country to “opt out” of their unions, the Freedom Foundation has also been in communication this year with the bill sponsors of last year’s legislation — Florida Rep. Dean Black and Florida Sen. Blaise Ingoglia — according to emails obtained by Orlando Weekly through a public records request.

Black and Ingoglia, neither of whom have ever been union members themselves, filed legislation for the 2024 session (HB 1471/SB 1746) that seeks to “clarify” the law’s vague directives, which have created a logistical nightmare for unions and PERC alike.

Labor leaders putting in the work to keep Florida’s public sector even moderately unionized, however, have picked their battles this time around, treading carefully as litigation continues.

The FEA — which sued the state over the law — and the Florida AFL-CIO (a federation of 500 local unions) have both publicly refrained from fighting Republicans over the new law this session.

It’s “the law of the land,” Dr. Rich Templin, chief lobbyist for the Florida AFL-CIO, conceded in a committee hearing over the 2024 legislation last month.

“We understand that. We accept it. It is what it is,” Templin continued, begrudgingly. “The problem is that we have had an incredibly difficult time complying with the law.”

Stephanie Kunkle, representing the FEA, took a similar approach. “We are not asking to re-litigate Senate Bill 256,” she said. “We are simply here asking for correction.”

The newly proposed legislation — dubbed a “glitch” bill — would add additional carve-outs from last year’s law for paramedics, EMTs and 911 dispatchers. (Funny how, when Democrats tried to do the same last year, Republicans rejected the idea.)

The glitch bills also seek to address an onerous auditing requirement that GOP Sen. Joe Gruters, a certified public accountant by trade, told his Republican colleagues last year would be a mistake to implement. He was one of just a handful of Republicans who joined Democrats in voting “no” on the law.

There’s other stuff in the proposed glitch bills, too, that could make unions’ survival even more of a challenge — adding additional reporting requirements for unions, for instance, and expanding the ability of PERC to decertify unions “intentionally misrepresenting” information they’re now required to submit annually to the Commission.

Both bills are being fast-tracked through the state Legislature with little fanfare. “There’s broad support for it, and I expect that we will get this done,” Rep. Black, the House bill sponsor, told Orlando Weekly in a phone call last month.

Not all doom and gloom

Despite Florida’s grim organizing landscape, there is still some power in a union yet — both in the public sector, where there are obvious challenges, and in the private sector, where thousands of workers at Disney, UPS, the Orange County Convention Center and automaker Stellantis won major gains last year.

Public sector union membership in Florida remained fairly steady last year, although that could change this year with decertifications.

According to census information compiled by UnionStats, less than one-third of Florida’s public sector workforce (26.2%) was covered by a union in 2023. But that was similarly the case in 2022 (26.4%). Private sector union density in Florida, on the other hand, actually increased slightly, from 2.8% (admittedly, a dismally low number) to 3.3% — equal to roughly 277,000 workers total.

Thousands of teachers across Florida, in the face of the new law, have also taken it upon themselves to make sure the state won’t take their unions away without a fight.

Nearly two dozen education unions have filed petitions for recertification since the law’s membership threshold took effect in October, state records show.

“It was never about providing transparency for workers…It was always about eliminating their ability and their constitutional right to collectively bargain.”

Unionist teachers in Pinellas County launched a podcast where they discuss the real issues in their classrooms, from state censorship to excessive class sizes — and the challenges facing their union.

Johnson, the former AFSCME staffer, formed a new labor union, the Independent Association of Public and Private Employees, with some of the other AFSCME staff who were laid off.

Their plan, he told Orlando Weekly in December, is to organize public employees whose bargaining units have been decertified (beginning in the Jacksonville area) and who have limited or perhaps no other viable options for union representation.

“Our goal is just, you know, [to] just assist these employees that want a union and put all our efforts into making sure they have a better workplace,” said Johnson.

Templin, with the Florida AFL-CIO, underscored that what this wave of decertifications really exposes is the true nature of last year’s law coming to light.

“It was never about providing transparency for workers. It was never about, you know, sticking up for our public sector workers,” Templin told Orlando Weekly.  “It was always about eliminating their ability and their constitutional right to collectively bargain.”

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This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2024.