MIAMI-DADE: Teachers and other school employees in Miami-Dade County on Wednesday voted to keep their current union, United Teachers of Dade, after an unprecedented election. UTD received 83% support.
This came one day before Florida’s teachers unions will head to court in a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of new requirements for certain unions.
The Miami-Dade Education Coalition had challenged the UTD as the bargaining agent for the 30,000 teachers and other employees in the Miami-Dade school system.
“We always knew UTD would win!” UTD President Karla Hernandez-Mats said in a news release. “We proudly celebrate our victory against these deceptive anti-worker tactics. This win reflects the power of unity and commitment to workers’ rights. Unions matter and our strength is evident.”
“Today’s United Teachers of Dade victory is indicative of one thing: teachers and education staff professionals in Florida want a real union to represent them,” Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said. “Despite the millions that opposition groups poured into a disinformation campaign, despite Governor DeSantis’ assurances that we would lose — educators in our state have today delivered a clear message that we aren’t going anywhere. When our governor co-signs the agendas of fringe extremist groups and puts our students and our neighborhood public schools last- he’s betting on the wrong horse. It’s why he lost during the primary and why he lost again today. We will not be silenced. And we will never stop fighting for our students, teachers and staff.”
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023 signed a law that requires more public workers to pay dues to keep their unions alive, while simultaneously making it harder for employees to pay those dues.
Under the measure known as SB 256, unions representing tens of thousands of educators have been under pressure to clear the new standards or lose their collective bargaining rights. That’s despite workers’ right to organize being enshrined in Florida’s constitution.
The new law requires certain unions to recertify if the number of dues-paying members drops below 60% of those eligible to join – and bars unions from automatically deducting dues from members’ paychecks.
A trial is scheduled to begin at a federal courthouse in Tallahassee in the case brought by the Florida Education Association and a slate of county-level labor groups against the state agency that regulates unions.
“If you want to join, you can, but you write a check and you hand it over,” DeSantis said at the bill-signing ceremony. “That is gonna lead to more take-home pay for teachers.”
Notably, the law does not apply to unions representing law enforcement officers, correctional officers or firefighters. Leaders of the state’s teachers unions argue the measure was designed to punish the governor’s critics in organized labor while providing a carveout to help preserve the power of first responders who have supported him politically.
“There is no policy logic to the Act’s pervasive distinction between favored and disfavored unions,” attorneys for the unions wrote in a court filing. “But there is an unmistakable political logic.”
Teachers’ unions had railed against DeSantis’ approach to the coronavirus pandemic, which they argue forced educators back into the classroom in unsafe conditions and targeted school boards that tried to require masks on campus during a surge in new cases.
Union members have continued to criticize the Republican governor’s conservative agenda. During DeSantis’ 2022 reelection campaign, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor running against him was Karla Hernández-Mats, the president of United Teachers of Dade, the union representing workers in the state’s largest school district in Miami-Dade County.
In legal filings, attorneys for the labor groups have argued that the law infringes on the unions’ constitutional rights to free speech and equal protection, “while imposing no comparable burden on favored unions.”
