Posts tagged Florida
Making the Plains Great Again: Dealing the NEA Defeats in Two States
February 5, 2025 // The Center for Independent Employees’ (CIE) ongoing “Brushfires of Freedom” campaign in Kansas has spilled over into Nebraska, as CIE assisted teachers with removing the National Educators Association from three school districts in the two states at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025.
Opinion: Government Unions Are Hemorrhaging Members. Here’s Why.
February 4, 2025 // The numbers tell a stark story. While overall union membership sits at 9.9%, Big Labor still maintains a stranglehold over public employees, 32.2% of whom are union members. Of the 14.3 million union members nationwide, half work in government jobs, with teachers unions alone accounting for nearly one-quarter of all union members.
Brightline files lawsuit challenging onboard attendants’ unionizing effort in Florida
January 23, 2025 // The National Mediation Board ruled in favor of the union in November, thereby rejecting Brightline’s argument that they did not fall under their jurisdiction. A mail ballot election began last November, lasting through Tuesday, Jan. 14. A vote count revealed that onboard attendants voted 30 to 17 in favor of unionization, with 36 additional eligible voters sitting the election out.
Ex-leaders of Jacksonville teachers union plead innocent in fraud case; March trial possible
January 21, 2025 // The women were accused in the indictment of each selling back to the union more than $1.2 million worth of vacation time "they had not accrued and did not earn” between 2013 and 2022 as well as signing bonus checks for each other that weren’t shown to the 6,500-member union’s board.
Minimum wage increasing in nearly half of states, including Nebraska
January 14, 2025 // The minimum wage will increase in nearly half the states this year even as the federal wage floor remains stuck at $7.25 per hour. In many states, the minimum wage is automatically adjusted upward as inflation rises. But voters in several states, including deeply red ones such as Nebraska, Alaska and Missouri, chose in November to significantly increase their minimum wages this year.
More membership losses for National Education Association
January 13, 2025 // The National Education Association is still shedding members, according to the latest edition of a report it filed with the federal government. The national labor union that represents teachers and school staffers saw its membership drop from 2,451,693 to 2,439,963 in the past year, for a loss of 11,730 members. Each year, the union and its affiliates must file an LM-2 report with the U.S. Department of Labor.
Opinion:The Fall of Florida’s ‘Zombie Unions’
December 26, 2024 // The Florida Education Association (FEA), which represents teachers and school staff, has lost about 13% of its members since 2023, according to a review of federal data by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. That’s because members in several school districts voted not to recertify their chapters, allowing them to disband.
Florida Continues to Lead the Nation on Labor Reform and Worker Freedom
December 10, 2024 // In 2023, Gov. DeSantis led the effort on a transparency bill (SB 256), otherwise known as the Teachers’ Bill of Rights. Our organization, Workers for Opportunity, was proud to help support this legislation through testimony before the Florida Legislature, newspaper essays helping explain the legislation and other advocacy efforts. We also utilized educational materials provided by The James Madison Institute.
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.
Marquette University uses religious exemption to squash unionizing efforts
November 30, 2024 // e-track employees from Marquette's Klingler College of Arts and Sciences. (Ericka Tucker) by Heidi Schlumpf View Author Profile hschlumpf@ncronline.org Follow on Twitter at @heidischlumpf Join the Conversation Send your thoughts to Letters to the Editor. Learn more November 25, 2024Share on FacebookShare on TwitterEmail to a friendPrint By day, students at Marquette University may have Daniel Collette as their philosophy professor, but at night, he could be their Uber driver or DoorDash delivery person. The divorced dad of two also has had to give blood to make enough money to make ends meet. Collette is a full-time faculty member at the Jesuit university in Milwaukee and he has a doctoral degree. But as a "non-tenure-track" employee, he makes about a third less than other faculty on the tenure track. The typical non-tenure-track salary at Marquette is about $43,000, according to faculty who spoke to NCR. (Marquette does not publish salary information.) "I am truly tired to the bone," Collette told NCR. "It affects me, my health, my kids — and my students as well. The fact of the matter is that I'm not able to give them the same attention I would if I could just do my one job." Collette has joined other non-tenure-track faculty from Marquette's Klingler College of Arts and Sciences who are seeking to unionize to address issues of salary, workload and other disparities between tenure-track and non-tenure-track employees. He says the union could be "life-changing" for him. But Marquette is using a religious exemption to refuse to recognize the union — a move the pro-union faculty and their supporters say goes against the school's own mission and Catholic identity. "Continuing our strong partnership with faculty and staff — without needing to engage the union as an outside third party that may not share our same values — is the best way to deliver our Catholic, Jesuit mission and serve our students," Monica MacKay, senior director of university communication, said in a statement provided to NCR. Catholic social teaching strongly supports the right of workers to unionize. Pope Francis has spoken out in support of unions, as have the U.S. bishops. "Catholic social teaching supports the right of workers to choose whether to organize, join a union, and bargain collectively, and to exercise these rights without reprisal," says the bishops' document "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship." Marquette faculty and their supporters — including nearly 600 students and 75 tenured faculty who have signed petitions of support — question how the university's decision squares with its Catholic identity and mission. One sign at a Nov. 8 pro-union protest asserted: "Jesuit values = livable wages." Advertisement "They are essentially claiming a First Amendment right for a Catholic university to not follow its own mission," said Chris Gooding, an assistant teaching professor of theology and member of the union's steering committee. "That is not so much a right to religious freedom as it is a right to hypocrisy." In October, more than 65% of full-time, non-tenure-track faculty in the college of arts and sciences signed authorization cards expressing their desire to collectively bargain with the university through the United Campus Workers-Wisconsin union. On Oct. 25, university administration announced it would not sign an agreement to recognize the union. Religious colleges and universities don't have to accept elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), thanks to a decision during President Donald Trump's first administration that broadened the definition of religious freedom. They can, however, voluntarily choose to recognize unions and negotiate with them. Since that NLRB decision in 2020, Boston College, Seattle University, and St. Leo University in Florida have claimed the religious exemption, while St. Louis University instead chose to recognize a union of graduate student workers. St. Louis, Fordham, Loyola University Chicago, Georgetown and Santa Clara universities also all collectively bargain with faculty unions, according to Marquette's union organizers.