Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans have a new target

florida governor ron desantis (R) could head into the GOP presidential primary against Donald Trump with a shiny new conservative credential: public sector union buster.

Republicans in the Sunshine State are moving forward with legislation designed to make it harder for government employee unions to collect dues and, well, exist at all. The invoice clear the GOP-dominated state Senate in Tallahassee last week, despite several Republican lawmakers joining their Democratic colleagues in voting against it.

The bill has yet to pass the state House, which is also under strong Republican leadership, and must pass through committee before reaching the full House. DeSantis, who is leading a broad attack on what he claims is an “awakening” in education, has publicly backed the bill in regards to teachers’ unions.

Unions and their Democratic allies have managed to keep the jack-in-the-box of anti-labor provisions at bay for several years. But now they are alarmed—and furious—by the legislation’s advance.

Adding to his fury is the fact that Senate Republicans included an exception to the bill that protects unions that represent police, fire, and corrections officers — the unions most likely to politically support the Republicans.

In its current form, the bill would affect teachers, school support staff, bus drivers, janitors and sanitation workers, park and library employees and others across the public sector whose unions tend to support Democrats.

“The goal of the bill is to eliminate collective bargaining for public sector workers the governor doesn’t like,” said Rich Templin, director of politics and public policy for the Florida AFL-CIO. “Nobody directly involved has asked for this. This is another in a long list of policies that are being proposed solely for the governor’s candidacy for the White House.”

The unions are right to find the mechanics of the bill worrisome.

The main provision would prohibit unions representing teachers and other public sector workers from deducting dues from workers’ paychecks. That’s the main way workers pay their union dues now. They also use it to pay for health insurance premiums, gym memberships, and many other deductions that employers allow. Ending it would force unions to create new dues collection mechanisms, such as enabling workers to make ACH transfers through their banks.

Republicans have pursued a ban on the deduction of dues from paychecks in several states in recent years, portraying it as “paycheck protection” for workers, particularly teachers, against predatory unions. They were successful in Wisconsin, Michigan, Alabama, and Indiana. A federal judge recently blocked Indiana’s law takes effect after teachers’ unions filed a lawsuit alleging the law violated their constitutional right to freedom of association.

The loss of “fees control,” as paycheck deductions are known, is not necessarily a calamity for a union. But as an organizer once wrote in Labor Notes, create a “new layer of conviction” when trying to sign up a worker in the union, even one that supports the cause: “Not only does the staff member or organizer have to move the worker to action, we also have to convince them to give us their damn Bank information!”

What sets the Florida legislation apart is how the dues deduction ban could work in conjunction with a second anti-union provision.

Florida has long been a “right to work” state in which no worker can be required to pay dues to a union, even if they enjoy the benefits of a union contract. (He the entire US public sector now has the right to work, courtesy of a 2018 Supreme Court ruling). But in 2018, under the then governor. Rick Scott, Republicans added another challenge for state teachers unions: If the number of paying members in a bargaining unit falls below 50%, a process would be started whereby the union could be “decertified”, or purged and its contract voided.

As part of their new proposal, the Republicans would apply that decertification threshold to public sector unions in general and raise it from 50% to 60%. So, as unions have lost members due to the payroll deduction ban, they could more easily be in danger of losing certification, unless they represent police officers, firefighters or corrections officers.

“It’s pretty clear that this is political retribution,” said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, a union with more than 150,000 members. Of the unions forged, Spar said, “I have a lot of friends in those unions, but those unions have supported Governor DeSantis.”

HuffPost asked Republican state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a sponsor of the bill, what the rationale was for including an exception for certain unions that happen to be conservative. A spokesman pointed to a Senate committee hearing in which Ingoglia said that police officers and firefighters are “putting their lives in danger every day.”

“They may go to work and not know if they will come home that night,” Ingoglia said on March 16. employees and their union representatives… I would have a hard time telling the law enforcement officers who worked through the night from 12 to 8 that they would not have to sleep at all and meet their union representative at 11 am to give them their check.”

HuffPost asked a follow-up question: If this bill is really about “protecting” workers’ paychecks, don’t our heroes deserve the same protections other workers are afforded under the bill? The spokesman did not respond.

A DeSantis spokesperson would not say whether the governor supports excluding police officers and firefighters, and advised HuffPost to direct questions to the bill’s supporters in the legislature. in a Press conference where he promoted “paycheck protection,” DeSantis spoke of it solely in relation to teacher unions.

“Since this legislation is still subject to the legislative process (and therefore different iterations), the governor will decide on the merits of the bill in final form if it passes and is delivered to the governor’s office,” he said. the spokesperson, Jeremy. T. Redfern.

It is unclear how supporters of the legislation specifically arrived at 60% as an appropriate threshold below which a union would need to apply to the state for recertification. After all, there is some logic to the current marker of 50%, above which dues-paying members represent a majority.

The FEA’s Spar said he thinks he knows how the 60% was chosen.

“We know that he (DeSantis) had his staff call all over the state to find out where all the teachers unions were affiliated with, and found that they were all over 50%, many in the top 50 and quite a few over 60%,” spar said. “So why set a threshold of 50?”

The war with the teachers’ unions is nothing new for Republican luminaries. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were celebrated by the right for their attacks on public sector unions, though neither succeeded in carrying their anti-union record to the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

But in the case of Florida, labor leaders believe the push to eliminate the toll discount is wrapped up in DeSantis’ crusade against what he calls “awakened ideologyIn schools. He has banned “woke” textbooks, fought with the College Board over African-American studies, and attacked diversity, education and inclusion initiatives in higher education.

Spar said teachers’ unions are being targeted because the governor sees them as a line of defense against his education agenda, including at the university level.

“The governor has made it clear that if he doesn’t like you, he’s after you, whether you’re Disney(fiscal) Andrew Warrenmembers of the school board or the Higher Education CouncilSpar said. “The real reason we are dealing with this bill is because the teachers, the staff, and the professors…these are people who will come together and speak on behalf of children, communities, and families.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the Florida legislation “harmful attack” on collective bargaining rights in an email to HuffPost. Weingarten is so concerned about the bill and DeSantis’ educational agenda in general that she traveled to a union rally in miami on Saturday. She said DeSantis is issuing “authoritarian edicts.”

“We’ve all seen Governor DeSantis abandon the conservative notion of limited government, but this session he seems obsessed with taking away liberties and silencing those who have expressed doubts about his policies,” Weingarten said of the bill.

Templin, of the Florida AFL-CIO, said unions are trying to mobilize against the bill to prevent it from passing the House. But they are already discussing ways they would try to deal with the new system if the bill is signed and survives the almost inevitable court challenges.

Unions may end up pooling resources to create new dues collection systems if they can no longer deduct dues directly from workers’ wages. But Templin said other facets of the legislation would also be problematic, including the requirement for an annual re-audit that unions would have to conduct. According to Templin, some local unions are so small that auditing would place an unreasonable burden on staff.

Spar said Florida Republicans can talk a lot about cutting red tape and cumbersome regulations, but they seem happy to create more for unions they don’t like.

“This is an incredible amount of government overreach and intrusion,” he said. “We are private, democratic organizations… They are basically saying that teachers, staff and others can’t make their own decisions and they need a big government to make decisions for them.”