Posts tagged Florida’ Public Employees Relations Commission
Federal government reverses course on Florida union law, appeals court holds lawsuit
June 16, 2025 // An appeals court Tuesday put on hold a lawsuit that Florida filed against the federal government, after the Trump administration reversed course on a controversial 2023 state law that placed restrictions on public-employee unions. The law included a series of restrictions, including preventing most public employees from having dues deducted from their paychecks and requiring unions to be recertified as bargaining agents if fewer than 60% of eligible employees pay dues. The lawsuit deals with interplay between the state law (SB 256) and a longstanding federal law designed to ensure that transit workers’ collective-bargaining rights are protected before federal transit money is provided to local agencies.
Florida teachers union loses 20,000 members after government stops collecting dues
December 4, 2024 // In its annual Form LM-2 filed in November with the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL), the FEA disclosed having 111,133 employed, dues-paying members as of August 31, 2024, down from the 131,510 “active members” the union reported a year earlier. The precipitous decline far exceeds typical annual fluctuations in the union’s membership numbers and comes in the wake of Florida policymakers’ adoption of a package of government union reforms in 2023 championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis with the support of the Freedom Foundation and other conservative groups.
Judge finds Florida’s anti-union law union unconstitutional and ‘unreasonable’
November 12, 2024 // U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker ruled that public teacher union members in Pinellas and Hernando counties had been damaged by the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission after the passage of SB 256, which had a component banning payroll deductions for the purpose of paying dues. Hernando United School Workers and the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association argued that prohibiting payroll deductions was unconstitutional, violated their right to be free from the state impairment of contracts. The state argued the law was necessary to promote transparency and “allow union members to decide how to pay their dues and understand how much they were paying.”
Florida teachers’ union accused of strong-arming educators to join in effort to boost lagging numbers
December 3, 2023 // “I used to be a UTD building steward, and I was so disgusted with the union that I left it,” the teacher responded, according to the complaint. “Why would I want to pay dues?” The second complaint alleges that an organizer at a Miami-Dade public school made “loud and shaming remarks” about a teacher “in the presence of her colleagues” in an attempt to “verbally pressure” her into paying union dues. The teacher was approached as she was trying to use the faculty lounge’s restroom and made “repeated assertions that she d[id] not want to pay dues or be a member” of UTD, the filing states.
As Florida’s new union law goes into effect, it’s ‘do or die’ time for labor
July 10, 2023 // In the face of the double-whammy law — creating a new process for paying dues while simultaneously requiring more people to pay dues — public labor unions are launching all-out campaigns to get their numbers up. “Are we at 60%? No. I can't give you a definitive number,” said Se’Adoria “Cee Cee” Brown, the president of AFSCME Local 199. “However, I can say that there has been a push and we've signed up 700 new members since we started this whole campaign, and when folks realized, ‘Hey, this is real.’” The Local 199 chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union represents about 7,500 employees of Miami-Dade County: transit officials, animal services, staff at the Medical Examiner’s Office, administrative clerks in the court system.