A national anti-union group tries to capitalize on a new union-busting law in Florida

After lobbying a union-busting law through the Florida Legislature, the Freedom Foundation is now contacting public workers across the state and urging them to abandon their unions.

Photo credit: SEIU Local 99

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With a key deadline looming under a controversial new law, a national anti-union group is encouraging teachers and other public worker in Florida to abandon their unions.

The Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit based in Olympia, Wash., has been sending mailers with misleading claims to the homes of public-sector employees urging them not to join or pay dues to their union.

“Are you tired of seeing your dues going toward funding a massive bureaucracy?” one mailer asks. “Don’t give them your bank account or credit card.”

The “opt out” campaign is timed to capitalize on a union-busting law that the Freedom Foundation helped lobby through the Florida Legislature earlier this year.

That new law (Senate Bill 256) makes it more difficult for most public workers in Florida to pay union-membership dues. It does so by taking away their right to pay dues via automatic paycheck deductions — the same way many employees pay for health insurance, retirement contributions or other workplace benefits.

At the same time as it makes the payment process more cumbersome, SB 256 also requires more workers to pay dues overall — or else risk losing the benefits and protections under any collective-bargaining agreement their union has negotiated with their employer.

The ultimate goal is to dissolve as many public labor unions as possible — and all the labor contracts they have negotiated. That would bring down wages and benefits for government workers. But it would also drag down pay for people in the private sector, too — especially for women workers.

Starting Oct. 1, unions will have to show that at least 60 percent of the workers they represent have become active, dues-paying members. Unions that fail to pass that 60 percent test could lose their ability to bargain on behalf of their workers.  

A handful of unions have sued in both state and federal court to stop the 60 percent mandate from taking effect, but those efforts have so far failed.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made SB 256 — which anti-union advocates often call the “paycheck protection” bill — a personal priority during the 2023 session of the Florida Legislature, which ended shortly before DeSantis launched his campaign for president. The bill is impacting hundreds of thousands of public employees across Florida, including teachers, librarians, garbage collectors and emergency dispatchers.

But the law doesn’t affect all public-sector workers. That’s because DeSantis and Republicans in the Florida Legislature made sure that none of the “protections” of SB 256 apply to police officers, firefighters, state troopers and prison guards — whose unions have politically supported DeSantis and Republicans in the Florida Legislature.

Rusty Brown, the Freedom Foundation's director of special projects, said the group is contacting workers in Florida in part to make sure they aren’t pressured into enrolling into new dues-payment plans as unions scramble to replace automatic paycheck deduction programs. The group has waged similar opt-out campaigns in other states.

Brown also said the Freedom Foundation wants Florida workers who may be dissatisfied with their union to know that they are newly empowered under SB 256. That’s partly because the law now gives a minority of employees the leverage to trigger the potential dissolution of their union simply by withholding dues.

The law “provides a more straightforward means of accountability,” said Brown, a former Donald Trump appointee to the U.S. Department of Labor.

But the Freedom Foundation is also misleading the same workers it says it is trying to help. Specifically, at least one of the group’s mailers to public-school teachers claims that SB 256 “made it easy” to form a new or replacement union.

“If you’re really unhappy with your union, SB 256 made it easy to form your own union, unaffiliated with the NEA [National Education Association], AFT [American Federation of Teachers] or any other national organization,” the mailer says.

That’s not true. While SB 256 makes it easier to disband an existing union, it does nothing to help workers organize a new or replacement union.

The Freedom Foundation is one of a half dozen right-wing nonprofits that lobbied in favor of SB 256. Tax records show those organizations are, to a large extent, funded by the same small network of superrich families and their private foundations.