Posts tagged recertification
Miami-Dade teachers’ union faces potential decertification
November 17, 2023 // As of last week, only 58.4% of United Teachers of Dade members were paying dues to the union, short of the 60% required by most public sector unions under a new state law. On Friday, the union was set to send a snapshot of membership to the Public Employee Relations Commission, or PERC, the state agency that regulates public employee unions.
Commentary: Dade Teachers’ Union Looks to the Failed Policies of Chicago for Salvation
November 10, 2023 // Taking a look at financial statements from the NEA, its priorities are unmistakably clear. Almost a third of its budget is devoted to politics and political organizations. A quarter goes toward officer salaries and benefits, while a mere five percent is spent on representing NEA members. In real dollars, the NEA spends $13 per member per year actually representing its members. Last year, the union spent almost twice as much on benefits for its own employees as it did on representing NEA’s three million members. Teachers are smart, and the realization that more than half of their dues is sent out of the district to fund the NEA’s massive bureaucracy and political agenda is bound to trigger questions the union can’t answer.
Florida unions scramble to avoid recertification
July 17, 2023 // “Florida’s recertification requirement doesn’t automatically remove unions—it makes them stand for re-election,” said AFFT Special Counsel David Osborne. “It’s only fair that public employees should get to vote on who represents them, and democracy would force union officials to reassess their model and prove their value to public employees,” he said. Overall, it is estimated that only 23 out of 65 total teachers unions in Florida passed the 60% threshold in 2022, while the rest varied from as low as 36% to 59%.
Opinion: These powerful unions helped flip the Pennsylvania House
May 4, 2023 // Union executives’ political spending continues to break records. For the first time in Pennsylvania history, government unions’ combined political action committee spending surpassed $20 million in one election cycle, more than triple what they spent a decade ago. By comparison, the record-breaking spending in the seven-way Pennsylvania Supreme Court race in 2015 reached a total of $15.8 million across all candidates from all parties. For the governor’s race alone, public sector union executives gave nearly $5.5 million in direct political contributions to Josh Shapiro’s campaign. Three unions in particular — the commonwealth’s largest teacher union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association, and two national unions representing state workers, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — reported more than $1 million each. It’s no coincidence that Shapiro must soon sit down and bargain with SEIU and AFSCME executives and that the PSEA expects huge returns in terms of state funding.
Florida House Passes Historic Union Transparency Bill Backed by Workers for Opportunity
April 26, 2023 // The Florida House of Representatives voted today to pass SB 256, which increases union transparency and changes how union dues are collected for public employees. Workers for Opportunity has spearheaded this collaborative effort with teachers, policymakers, the administration and in-state allies since 2019. The legislation drew from Workers for Opportunity's proposed reforms giving employees more control over their paychecks and union representation. "This bill gives Florida teachers a voice and a choice,” said Senior Labor Policy Advisor Vincent Vernuccio. “Teachers and other public workers will know their rights. They’ll know exactly how much union membership costs them each year. And they’ll know that, if their union isn’t serving them, they can do something about it." The bill allows public employees to opt out of union membership at any time. It also increases the threshold for triggering a union recertification from 50% to 60%,
Florida Republicans introduce bills prohibiting paycheck deductions for public-sector union dues
March 14, 2023 // Vincent Vernuccio, a representative for the Mackinac Center’s Workers for Opportunity initiative, said, “[SB 256] is about transparency, accountability, good bookkeeping, and democracy. … This bill is about the rights of public employees: making sure they’re informed and they can exercise them.” Freedom Foundation representative Rusty Brown said, “There’s nothing in this bill that curtails organizing or collective bargaining for wages, benefits, or working conditions, which is what a union should be doing. And when you have a union whose membership is half [the people they represent] … then that could be indicative of a problem. … [This bill] gives the employees represented by the union the opportunity to vote … if they would like to continue allowing that union to represent them.”
David R. Osborne: What one teacher did when her union didn’t represent her
August 31, 2022 // The Westinghouse teachers aren’t the first educators in their state to have their workplace upended by a union supposedly dedicated to working on their behalf. The PSEA is notorious for ignoring the needs of its membership. Last year, the union spent only $1 out of every $5 of dues actually representing its members. The other $4 went to overhead, politics and lobbying.
Op-Ed: Ford in bed with UAW over card check campaign
June 13, 2022 // The UAW with its years-long federal corruption trial is desperate for new members and revenue, and eagerly awaits a card check campaign. As we know in Michigan, once the UAW becomes embedded into a facility, they will never allow a recertification vote or any attempt by workers to decertify. Once voted in, workers are stuck with the UAW for generations to come. It will simply be forced upon them as a condition of employment. Over the last couple of decades, autoworkers in the South – when granted their right to a secret ballot – have demonstrated time after time that they are not interested in what the UAW has to offer. Those 11,000 future autoworkers in Kentucky and Tennessee deserve those same rights, freedoms, and protections
Why Pennsylvania Needs Wisconsin-Style Government Union Reform
February 24, 2022 // Government union executives use this power to trap government employees in unions, deny them alternative representation, and lobby against fiscal and educational reforms needed to make Pennsylvania more prosperous.
Florida lawmakers must embrace pro-worker reforms | Opinion
February 10, 2022 // Government employees perform a public service for the people of our state. They’re not obligated to serve unions, too. By embracing the commonsense pro-worker reforms in Paycheck Protection, lawmakers would measurably improve the lives of state employees while making Florida an even better place to live, work and raise a family.