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Florida state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, defends a bill described as “union-busting” during a Senate committee meeting on March 7, 2023.
Dozens of union members gathered in a Florida Senate committee room Tuesday night to voice their opposition to a Republican-sponsored bill targeting public sector unions, Senate Bill 256, that could cost public employees benefits and hurt working families.
The bill, described by critics as “union-busting,” advanced in a 5–3 vote along party lines after an hour of public comment from union members across the state of Florida.
SB 256, filed by State Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, would impose new requirements on public sector labor unions in Florida, including those representing educators, local and state government employees, healthcare workers, and blue collar workers in sanitation, transit and public works — essential jobs that keep communities running.
The bill would ban the automatic deduction of dues from union members’ paychecks — a process that’s already fairly normal for deducting things such as health insurance.
Sen. Ingoglia said automatic deduction was a “privilege,” afforded to union members, not a right.
It would also impose a membership threshold, requiring that 60% of workers eligible for union representation be dues-paying members.
Otherwise, a union could face decertification. If a union is decertified, that union’s contract — containing agreements on things such as wages, health benefits, retirement savings plans and more — is also no longer enforceable.
Because Florida’s what’s known as a right-to-work state, workers in a unionized workplace can be covered by a union contract without being dues-paying members. That, of course, reduces the financial resources unions have available to negotiate those strong contracts.
A 2015 report from the Economic Policy Institute found that public sector employees in “right-to-work” states and states that prohibit collective bargaining in the public sector make less than their private-sector peers. Unions, however, can help fill that gap.
Sen. Ingoglia, a Republican from Spring Hill, said the bill is meant to increase accountability for “union bosses” and to force more conversations between union representatives and workers.
“If you look at it, it is a pro-employer — excuse me, pro-employee piece of legislation,” Ingoglia quickly corrected himself, Freudian slip and all, to laughter from the committee room audience.
But union members from across the state, including several self-identified Republicans, feel differently.
“The challenges are real. The worker shortages are real. From bus drivers to teachers, from food service professionals to custodians, we’re overworked,” said Patrick Strong, an educational support professional for Okaloosa County Public Schools who identified himself as a conservative Republican. “And then in the midst of it all, the legislators are proposing taking away my freedoms by not allowing dues deductions and mandating a certain percentage of membership to have a union,” he added.
To form a union, at least 30% of workers eligible must sign cards or union petitions demonstrating their support. Under legislation signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Scott in 2018, educators’ unions in Florida must maintain a 50% threshold minimum
That was a policy modeled after a highly contentious, GOP-backed bill in Wisconsin, enacted in 2011, that prompted a movement of over 100,000 workers and allies to gather outside Wisconsin’s state capitol in protest.
“This bill does absolutely nothing good for the working class,” one worker told lawmakers, speaking out against a bill that targets most of Florida’s public sector unions.
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“This bill does absolutely nothing good for the working-class, human worker,” a transit worker and union member from Orlando told state senators about SB 256. “If I choose to have my dues deducted from my paycheck, it is my choice,” he added. “Why are you creating a condition of servitude upon me, stripping me of my rights to choose?”
Union members say that a ban on automatic dues deductions would be a major and unnecessary inconvenience. It could create a logistical nightmare for unions, when their time and resources could be better spent on other union-related activities.
Union dues support a union’s activities, which can include collective bargaining (i.e. hammering out a union contract) and contract administration, as well as political activities such as lobbying.
Sen. Ingoglia argued the prohibition would strengthen unions by forcing union representatives to have more face-to-face conversations with workers.
Notably, all requirements imposed by Ingoglia’s proposed law would not apply to unions representing cops, firefighters and correctional officers — male-dominated unions that generally endorse Republicans for office, and generally make sizable campaign contributions to same.
Sen. Ingoglia said this exemption was meant to prevent these workers, who often work long hours, from having to physically make haste to a union hall to hand a union representative a check for dues. “They’re literally putting their lives on the line,” said Ingoglia.
This didn’t sit well with some folks.
A representative for 1199 SEIU of Florida, the state’s largest healthcare union, said resident physicians at Jackson Memorial Hospital, a public healthcare facility, work 80 to 100 hours per week on average, also literally saving people’s lives.
Others said they didn’t want to curtail the union rights of the cops or firefighters, but wanted to ensure the rights of all union members were respected.
“We would not take a benefit away from our first responders,” said James Ingle, an electrician from Gainesville. “This is a detriment to workers that they are spared from, but I’ll tell you who isn’t spared from it is linemen, who also run into danger every day, who also face long hours on second and third shift, who also have to go on emergency call-outs — and who die and are injured at much higher rates than police or fire.”
According to 2021 data from the U.S. Department of Labor, electrical work is one of the deadliest jobs in America. Police and firefighters don’t crack the top 10.
“Just like firefighters and policemen, I also work long hours frequently and don’t get a lot of sleep at night,” said Craig Schroeder, a seventh-grade English teacher for Leon County Public Schools. “This bill will take away a decision that should be mine and mine alone,” he added, saying the bill distracts from “the very real needs of my students and all students in Florida.”
While similar legislation has been proposed since 2011 — back when it was now-Congressman Matt Gaetz leading the union-busting charge — this year’s bill has been interpreted as an attack specifically on teachers and college faculty, who have faced the brunt of political attacks in recent years through the politicization of classrooms and baseless accusations of “indoctrination” from conservative activists.
“Our schools have critical needs, and I keep looking and hoping that this body is going to address those needs,” said Victoria Kidwell, a first-grade teacher for over two decades in Clay County. “My union advocates for me and my students.”
Teachers expressed frustration that they had to spend their time up in Tallahassee asking lawmakers not to dictate what they do with their paychecks, instead of advocating for pragmatic solutions to address issues such as staffing shortages in schools, an inability to make ends meet in Florida on a teacher’s salary, and the behavioral struggles of students.
SB 256 would carry out the broad strokes of DeSantis’ proposed attack on teachers unions, which he spuriously titled the “Teachers’ Bill of Rights.”
It would also affect colleges and universities who are already grappling with proposals from the GOP this year that would, among other things, gut diversity programs and remove some majors, such as gender studies, entirely.
While a handful of people waived in support of the bill without speaking, just three people on Tuesday showed up to speak in support of SB 256 in person — all from conservative think tanks.
One, Sal Nuzzo from the Florida-based James Madison Institute, chairs a task force of the American Legislative Exchange Council — a corporate-funded “bill mill” that crafts anti-union, anti-LGBTQ and anti-democracy legislation for state legislators across the U.S.
The two others were out of state, from Texas and Michigan.
The paltry support for this bill wasn’t lost on some members of the Senate Committee.
“It’s interesting that the last three speakers were men in suits from think tanks and not actually people who are affected,” said Sen. Tina Polsky, a Democrat.
All three Democrats on the state Senate Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee, including Sen. Tracie Davis — a former teacher and union member — voted against the bill.
All five Republicans voted in favor — without offering any explanation during debate of why they supported it.
Ingoglia, who’s also filed a proposal to “cancel” the state’s Democratic Party as well as a proposal that’d require companies that cover gender-affirming healthcare to also pay for any subsequent detransition treatment, is not on that committee.
And he pushed back against the idea that the bill is “union-busting.”
“You still have a right to be in a union,” said Ingoglia. “We are not taking that right away.”
Republican legislators in Utah and Oregon have also introduced similar legislation this year taking aim at public sector unions, while Oklahoma lawmakers are aggressively targeting teachers’ unions specifically.
With Tuesday’s vote, SB 256 will now advance to its next committee stop.
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