Hourly employees at the City of Tampa are at-risk of losing their union

Some hourly employees in the City of Tampa are at-risk of losing their union and their seat at the table for contract negotiations. Their situation stems from a 2023 law, SB 256, which changed the requirements for how unions register with the state and how they collect dues from members.

Before the law, teachers unions needed to present at least 50% of their dues-paying members to the state’s Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC).
No other unions had any sort of minimum membership threshold in place before SB 256—nicknamed the “Paycheck Protection Act”—upped that requirement for nearly all unions a to 60% and made it so that members have to opt in to pay dues to their unions, as opposed to union payments being automatic deductions from a member’s paycheck like with a 401K.

Still, SB 256 makes exceptions for law enforcement and firefighter bargaining units; there’s also an exception that allows PERC to waive certain SB 256 requirements for mass transit employees, but only as necessary for a public employer to comply with 49 U.S.C.

In just over a year, the law has led to over 60,000 thousand public sector employees across the state losing their union representation with the decertification of over 50 unions, according to an investigation by WLRN in Miami. McKenna Schueler, a reporter at Creative Loafing Tampa Bay sibling publication Orlando Weekly has followed this topic extensively and cites over 90 bargaining units (distinct groups of workers with a common interest represented by a union) that have been decertified since the law took effect. The law affects all public sector employee unions, except those for police officers, firefighters and correctional officers.

The Amalgamated Transit Union represents over 200,000 members working in public transit, across the U.S. and Canada. ATU Local 1464 represents 2,000 City of Tampa employees under its bargaining unit. Members work in the city’s solid waste and park departments, and for Hillsborough Regional Area Transit.

To meet the new threshold, ATU Local 1464 must sign up 60% of this total unit, or 1,200 people as dues-paying members by the end of January in order to re-register with the state and negotiate its next contracts in March, according to the local chapter’s president Stephen Simon.

“In my opinion, it’s a union busting law…and for the city to not be able to deduct dues—which was a practice for over 40 years—we were scrambling, you know, because now we have to collect dues ourselves from all of the members and we don’t have the personnel to really run around and touch everyone personally,” Simon told CL.

When Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law in May 2023, he praised it for giving choice to teachers (and other public sector employees in the state). “By signing the Paycheck Protection Act, Florida teachers will be able to choose how their hard-earned money is spent. School unions will no longer be able to hold teachers’ paychecks hostage with veiled threats while hiding where the money goes,” he said in a post to the social network formally known as Twitter.

In the immediate aftermath, unions across the state took legal action against it. Including the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

“Gov. DeSantis has made it clear that he is targeting educators because we exercise our constitutional right to speak out against attempts by this governor and others to stymie the freedom to learn and to stifle freedom of thought,” FEA president Andrew Spar said at the time.

SB 256 has led to the decertification of all eight of the state’s adjunct faculty unions—including those at The University of South Florida, St. Pete College and Hillsborough Community College—affecting over 8,000 adjunct professors across the state, per Orlando Weekly.

In November, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled partly in favor of the union members, recognizing their constitutional right to collective bargaining, or negotiate contracts and benefits with their employer through a union. “Prohibition on the collection of union dues through payroll deductions, as applied to Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association’s and Hernando United School Workers’s existing collective bargaining agreements, is unconstitutional,” Walker ruled.

Florida is one of only a few states which protects workers’ right to collective bargaining in its constitution.

“This ruling reaffirms that collective bargaining agreements are contracts that need to be respected. Over and over again Governor DeSantis and anti-worker, anti-public education politicians have tried to dismantle our teachers’ unions,” Spar said in a press release. “And over and over again teachers, staff, students, parents and communities have come together to reaffirm their support for educators and for public education.”

The 2023 law, which some have also touted as Florida’s “Teachers Bill of Rights,” and a piece of “glitch legislation” made to fill in loopholes, which DeSantis signed last March, have been supported by conservative think tanks like Americans for Prosperity, founded by the Koch brothers, as well as others–from out-of-state–which the Kochs also support, including the Freedom Foundation, based in Washington, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, based in Michigan.

Back in 2023, Skylar Zander, the Florida State Director of Americans for Prosperity called the then-bill “long overdue” and “an unprecedented legislative proposal to establish greater accountability for teachers’ unions and other public sector unions.”

For the past month, ATU Local 1464 has held a membership drive. The local union hosts in-person events and has reached out to prospective members online. Simon said this push got the union between 400-450 new signups. He also said that the percentage of the bargaining unit fluctuates as people get promoted and retire. But, as this article goes to press, the chapter is approximately 300 dues-paying members shy of reaching its 60% threshold.

“So we’re trying to use every platform that we can to get the word out, you know, and also impress upon everyone the importance of us making our 60%,” said Simon. “Because if we don’t, then we’ll be decertified. And if we get decertified, that means no union, no contract.”

UPDATED 01/17/25 10:17 p.m. Corrected to make clear that before SB 256, teachers unions needed to present at least 50% of their dues-paying members to the state’s Public Employees Relations Commission. Also updated to not SB 256 exceptions for police and firefighters unions.

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This article appears in Jan 16-22, 2025.