Florida teachers unions score milestone victory in DeSantis’ war on public sector unions

The Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers union, announced Monday that 100 of its local unions throughout the state had successfully recertified — meaning, teachers represented by those unions had voted to keep their existing union alive.

Under Senate Bill 256,  passed into law in 2023 , most public sector unions in the state must hold annual recertification elections if less than 60 percent of the workers they represent are full, dues-paying members.

Florida’s right-to-work law, a policy rooted in efforts to stomp out multiracial solidarity during Jim Crow, means that no worker represented by a union in Florida can be “compelled” to pay dues. So, reaching that 60 percent threshold — asking workers to financially support their union through dues payments (in this economy!), when they don’t have to to reap the benefits — can be a challenge.

Unions that fail to reach that 60 percent threshold, under the new law, must petition the state Public Employees Relations Commission to hold a recertification election. If they don’t, the union is decertified.

State records show that so far, more than 69,000 public employees in Florida — including all formerly unionized adjunct faculty (represented by labor union SEIU), blue-collar workers such as school bus drivers, and nurses employed in various state departments — have seen their unions decertified and their union contracts nullified as a result of unions failing to petition the state for recertification. This means any rights or benefits they were guaranteed under their union contracts are now non-enforceable.

Members of the FEA, affiliated with the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, are not among those affected.

“Educators in the state of Florida, whether it’s professors or graduate assistants, whether it’s instructional staff in our K-12 schools or our support staff in those schools, they have all made it clear they want their union, and they want their contract,” FEA president Andrew Spar told Orlando Weekly.

“We cannot lose sight of the fact that this is an attempt to try to silence the voice and take away the rights and freedoms of people who work in our public schools and on our public college and university campuses.”

Full-time faculty at the University of Central Florida, city employees in Orlando, and K-12 public educators for the Orange, Osceola, and Volusia County public school systems are among the some 120+ unions statewide that have overwhelmingly voted in favor of recertifying their unions since being required to do so by law.

A targeted assault on teachers unions

Teachers unions were widely perceived as the target of Florida’s 2023 anti-union law, as a frequent political punching bag of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Republican governor, who championed the 2023 law ahead of his unsuccessful bid for U.S. President, had previously described education unions as “partisan groups” and framed the legislation as an effort to “rein in out-of-control unions” in schools.

Notably, unions that endorsed DeSantis for office — representing police, correctional officers and firefighters — were largely exempted from the new regulations.

Taking a page from the TRAP law playbook, SB 256 imposed not only the burdensome recertification requirement, but also made it harder for union members to pay dues (by prohibiting dues payments through a paycheck deduction) and expanded the types of information unions are now required to report to the state annually. DeSantis dubbed it the “Paycheck Protection Act,” though its official title was the less-catchy “Employee Organizations Representing Public Employees.”

Lawmakers last year adjusted an audit rule the law had imposed after police and firefighter unions lobbied its sponsors for changes.

“Nearly two years after a law that sought to destroy a worker’s right to have a union and millions of dollars spent by out-of-state, fringe, anti-worker groups, educators are standing firm and proudly voting to keep their local unions,” said Spar.

Touted as an effort to “empower educators,” the law is similar to anti-union policies enacted in other Republican-controlled states that seek to curtail or otherwise undercut collective bargaining rights. It was backed by corporate-funded groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council — a conservative “bill mill” that feeds model policies to state legislators — and other explicitly anti-union groups.

“Pro-union forces can squawk and try to spin this all they want, but this is just common-sense legislation,” said Center for Independent Employees president Russ Brown, in a statement following the law’s passage. Brown, who attended the bill signing, is a labor relations consultant who runs a firm specializing in “union avoidance” out of Satellite Beach.

The e-commerce giant Amazon, for instance, paid Brown’s firm RoadWarrior Productions more than $3 million last year to persuade Amazon employees not to join forces with the Teamsters. The Teamsters Local 79 in Tampa, representing both public and private sector workers, lost half a dozen bargaining units (groups of workers represented by a union) last year as a result of new requirements under the amendment.

Clinton McCracken, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association in Orlando, representing more than 13,000 educators, school psychologists, and other personnel across one of the nation’s largest school districts, said he was “proud” of educators for choosing to support their unions.

“Teachers tell me time and again — they see that this union is fighting for them, and they know we accomplish far more together than anyone can alone,” McCracken told Orlando Weekly in a text. “At a time when public education is under constant attack and disinformation runs rampant, our strength is in our unity.”

About 98 percent of educators who turned out for the recertification vote in Orange CTA’s case last month voted in favor of keeping their union intact. Out of 3,923 voters who participated, records show all but 66 voted in favor of recertifying their union.

According to the FEA, which encompasses 168 bargaining units statewide, an average 94.3 percent of ballots cast through recertification elections so far have been in favor of unionization and educators preserving their union contracts.

“Workers in Florida are reaching a tipping point — inflation is impacting families daily while bureaucrats and billionaires continue to amass wealth,” said Spar. “The power to fight back comes from workers’ unions.”

“Inflation is impacting families daily while bureaucrats and billionaires continue to amass wealth.”

In Orange County Public Schools, the union has made headway on establishing paid maternity leave and paid bereavement leave. The union has also fought to restore educators’ planning time, protect the rights of nursing mothers on the job, and negotiate percentage-based raises for teachers.

SB 256: a costly new law

Notably, the law has tripled the caseload of the Public Employees Relations Commission, the state agency charged with enforcing public sector union regulations.

Ahead of the effective date (when it was still Senate Bill 256), DeSantis gifted the Commission with a nearly $1 million boost to its budget, specifically to “implement provisions” of the law, according to budget documents. The Commission asked for even more funding this year in an effort to “streamline the increased workload associated with the implementation of Senate Bill (SB) 256.”

“Since the implementation of SB 256, the workload at PERC has increased significantly in all areas” their request, submitted last October, notes.

The Commission staffs just two election specialists, according to a state employment portal, and is led by two commissioners and a chairperson appointed by DeSantis.

One of the commissioners, Jeff Aaron, is a local attorney from Orlando who was recently implicated in a scandal involving DeSantis’ wife, Casey, and her charity Hope Florida. The other, Michael Sasso, is also local to Central Florida and is the husband of Florida Supreme Court justice Meredith Sasso (another DeSantis appointee).

FEA President Spar chastised the state for spending “millions of taxpayer dollars” on SB 256, which he describes as an “unnecessary and arbitrary law.” The cost of each recertification election conducted by PERC is split between the union and the public employer (e.g. a county or city government or school system).

Union leaders like Spar believe those funds could be put to better use elsewhere.

“Students deserve public schools that are fully staffed and resourced with the programs and assistance they need,” Spar stated. “Educators should be able to provide for their families with only one job and not have to struggle to pay bills, buy groceries, or afford rent or insurance.” According to the National Education Association, Florida ranks near dead-last in average teacher pay nationwide.

“We continue to stand strong,” said Spar, “Not just for educators and students across the state — but for our hospitality workers, machinists, postal service employees, teamsters, truckers and the more than 500 labor unions in the state with workers who ensure our communities are stronger because of their work.”

Some Florida Republicans attempted this year to further undercut public sector unions like the FEA by making it harder for unions to recertify through the election process. The quartet of bills filed didn’t make it past the finish line, however, as the Florida legislature wrapped up most of this year’s policy work at the beginning of May.

The process of developing a state budget for the next fiscal year remains ongoing.

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This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2025.