Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
- The Florida senate passed a bill that would make it harder for public sector unions to collect dues and recertify.
- Police and firefighters' unions are exempt from the anti-union provisions.
- The bill could cost local teachers' unions and taxpayers at least $900,000 annually.
Florida Republicans aren't cracking down on all unions — just the ones that vote for Democrats.
A new bill originally proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and now passed by the Sunshine State's GOP-led Senate would make it harder for teachers to form a union without enough dues-paying members. While it will impact Democratic-leaning teachers' unions, along with most other public-sector unions, Republican-supporting police and firefighters' unions will be exempt.
The main provisions would prevent public employees from paying their dues as salary deductions — the primary way workers pay their dues — and would raise the threshold of dues-paying members needed to avoid union decertification from 50% to 60%. Decertification would mean employees would have to petition for a union again, and the state would have to conduct an election.
Importantly, the bill doesn't apply to police or firefighters' unions, which endorsed DeSantis in his 2022 reelection. Only teachers, bus drivers, janitors, and other public employees will be subject to the anti-union measures.
The bill comes after DeSantis signed universal school vouchers into law, which would divert funding from cash-strapped public schools to private ones. And teachers' unions, which have been one of the governor's biggest foes since they sued the state for reopening schools during the pandemic, say that the bill is political retribution.
"This is retaliation by the governor against people who he thinks get in his way," Andrew Spar, the president of the Florida Education Association, told Insider. FEA is the largest teachers union in the state with over 150,000 members.
"The governor has a vendetta against teachers, staff, professors, and other public employees," Spar said, even though 30% of FEA's members are registered Republicans.
Police and firefighters "tended to support his campaign, so they're not going to be included in the bill," he explained.
Though DeSantis announced the main provisions of the bill in January, his office did not comment on whether he supports the bill's current exemptions for police and firefighters' unions.
The governor "will decide on the bill's merits in its final form if and when it passes and is delivered to the governor's office," a spokesperson said.
The Republican offices of Senate President Kathleen Passidomo and the bill's sponsor, Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, did not immediately reply when asked to comment.
But Spar said, "Everything we hear: the governor's office wrote this bill."
The bill would cost teachers' unions and could bankrupt them
The Sunshine State has never been friendly to unions. In 1943, Florida became the first "right-to-work" state where workers can't be forced to pay union dues or fees, even if they benefit from union contracts. In 2018, the Republican legislature made it easier to decertify a union if eligible public employees paying dues fell below 50%.
DeSantis has framed his latest actions as "paycheck protection" for teachers.
"It's more of a guarantee that the money is actually going to go to teachers," he said at a school board retreat in 2022, "and not be frittered away by interest groups who get involved in the school system," according to Insider's Kimberly Leonard.
But Spar disagrees. "This is not about empowering public employees. This is about killing off the ability, the constitutional right, to come together in a union," he said.
By making it harder for public employees to pay their union dues, the law makes it harder for teachers' unions to reach the new 60% threshold and recertify.
"The governor's staff apparently called around to see the membership of public unions, specifically teachers," Spar said.
Since most of their local unions get dues from 50-60% of those eligible in their bargaining unit, the 60% threshold would mean union decertification, he explained. Teachers would then have to petition for recertification, and the Public Employees Relations Commission would have to conduct an election on the union's and taxpayer's dime, he said.
"It's requiring every year for locals that don't get to 60% to go through that process, which is time, money that will have to pay for all of that, and taxpayer money," Spar said.
The state Senate's analysis estimated the bill would cost $900,000 each year for implementation.
"We think that's a low number," Spar said.
Of the 100 local teachers unions Spar represents, 70-75 of those locals would need to hold an election to recertify, he said. That's just a fraction of the 150-200 of the state's 300 public-sector unions he expected would be decertified.
These smaller teachers' unions, especially the rural ones, can't afford an election every year, Spar said. Many only have revenues of a few thousand dollars.
Combined with a provision that would require local unions to hire a certified public accountant to audit their revenues annually, Spar said the bill is "meant to bankrupt those unions."
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/WJCjhV2
No comments:
Post a Comment