A proposal backed by a conservative think tank and Gov. Ron DeSantis that could prove to be another major hit to public sector labor unions in Florida won approval by the GOP-controlled Senate on Friday.
The vote was 20-14. Five Republican Senators — Ed Hooper, Corey Simon, Ana Maria Rodriguez, Ileana Garcia, and Alexis Calatayud, along with independent Sen. Jason Pizzo — joined all of the Democrats in opposing the bill.
In contrast to other controversial legislation still pending as the session winds toward it’s scheduled close next Friday, this one has a chance of becoming law. The House companion (HB 995) is ready to be considered by that chamber next week. If passed, it will then go to DeSantis desk, where he is expected to sign it into law.
House Speaker Daniel Perez is refusing to bring up Senate bills without companion legislation that hasn’t gone through the House process.
The measure (SB 1296) is sponsored by Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers. It would require that public sector labor unions could only be re-certified if they secure at least 50% of all of the employees in the bargaining unit to vote, and that the vote itself wins 50% plus one support. Currently, unions only need a majority of those who voted.
Martin argues there have been times during union recertification votes when only a small percentage of members voted at all.
“If you can’t prove your worth to your own co-workers, you shouldn’t have the ability to force them to become completely silent and centralize the negotiation power to a select few. The select few that somehow got the memo that there was a vote,” said Martin.
“This is not a bill to go after good unions that are fighting the fight for the people in their class,” he added. “This is a bill that only comes into play when the membership in that class doesn’t care enough to be members.”
Although much of the focus of the bill as it made its way through the committee process has been about how it would affect teacher unions, public sector unions representing resident physicians, nurses, sanitation workers, bus drivers, and linemen would all be affected as well.
The bill excludes police, firefighter, and correction officer unions, who tend to vote Republican. However during committee meetings, numerous rank-and-file workers testifying against the bill described themselves as Republicans.
‘A years-long campaign’
The proposal comes three years after the labor movement in Florida took a massive blow, when Gov. DeSantis signed SB 256 into law. That measure required teacher unions and other public sector unions (but not those representing police or firefighters) to stop automatically deducting dues from members’ paychecks, and required that union membership has to constitute 60% of a bargaining unit, an increase from the old threshold of 50%.
The result is that more than 100 public sector bargaining units in Florida have been decertified as May 2025, leading to an estimated 69,000 workers losing union representation, according to Orlando Weekly reporter McKenna Schueler.
“This is the next step in a years-long campaign to eliminate public sector unions in Florida,” declared Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando.
Smith noted that the conservative think tank Freedom Foundation helped pass SB 256 and has been lobbying Florida lawmakers to pass SB 1296. After the law passed in 2023, there have been 209 decertification elections targeting teacher unions in Florida and, in all of them, teachers voted to maintain their unions. The new legislation, he said, was “intended to be the kill shot to finish the job.”
Change in bill language
In its last committee hearing earlier this week, Martin accepted an amendment from Sen. Corey Simon that changed the minimum requirement for recertification to 25% of the bargaining unit. They would then have to approve recertification by 60%.
That locked in Simon’s vote, which was necessary, as the proposal only passed on a 10-8 vote (a tie would have killed the bill).
However, Martin amended the bill Thursday to return it to the requirement that 50% of the entire bargaining unit would have to participate in a vote, with them then approving it by 50%.
Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, said that legislative maneuver is what makes people lose faith in the political process.
“When a compromise happens, and it happens in good faith, and then the bill moves back towards the original form, and then we try to be slick and change the language and just doing the same thing, members, we’re not operating in good faith,” he said. “Because if we’re going to change a bill, let’s do it in the open.”
Martin attempted to explain the change in the bill language.
“Those of you who have had to gather votes before and count votes and try to move the numbers around and try to change language,” he said. “That’s exactly what happened in this process. And you’re very familiar with it, because everybody’s done it.”
