You probably have not heard of Florida S.B. 256, and that's not a good thing. This is the latest effort to date by Florida's legislature and its governor to change the fabric of the state, in this case by dropping what amounts to a nuke on the state's public-sector unions.
In brief, S.B. 256 does two things.
Thing number one: it forbids public-sector unions from deducting dues directly from workers’ paychecks. This is bad–unions get most of their dues from this process–and is pretty clearly intended to starve them of their funding. Without direct deductions, unions would need to establish another mechanism to collect dues like ACH transfers–and that would be a clusterfuck to put it mildly.
Thing number two: 60% of a bargaining unit must be dues-paying members, or the union is has to reapply for certification with the state–an audit must be done every year to ensure compliance with this threshold. Most public-sector unions explicitly do not meet this criteria. In Central Florida alone, for example, this would decertify five of the nine major teacher's unions. Across all of Florida, 64% did not meet this threshold as of last year. Many public-sector unions are on track to have to recertify or potentially be decertified entirely. (It's privately speculated by some union members that Ron DeSantis made a personal effort to find a threshold that would decertify most unions.)
Curiously, firefighters unions and police unions are exempt from the bill's provisions. When asked what meaningfully differed between a police union and a teacher's union, Senate sponsor Blaise Ingoglia could only say that these groups “put their lives on the line”–a comically obvious lie about the bill's intent, and not a particularly good one. At one point, notes the Orlando Weekly, he accidentally described it as a pro-employer piece of legislation. Unfortunately, we do not live in West Wing, so exposing this obvious charade means very little.
Despite a series of efforts by Democrats to variously reduce the membership threshold to 50% (maintaining the status quo; Florida unions are required already to do this), to exempt unions with less than $250,000 in expenditures and revenues from auditing, and to add medical technician unions to the exemption list, no softening of the bill occurred. The bill passed more-or-less as it was written when introduced, and should be signed in the near future by Ron DeSantis.
Whether a legal challenge to the bill is forthcoming remains to be seen.
