Florida's understaffed public labor relations agency seeks extra funds to carry out anti-union law
The small agency tasked with enforcing the law is asking for the state to fund new positions in next year's budget to “streamline the increased workload” tied to S.B. 256.
When Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law in 2023 designed to undermine, if not ultimately get rid of Florida’s public sector unions, neither state legislators nor Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared to have fully considered the potential cost to taxpayers, or the burden it would place on the small, understaffed agency tasked with implementing and enforcing the law.
A legislative staff analysis developed ahead of its passage estimated a financial impact of $903,238 for staffing and travel costs. It also predicted an “indeterminate” fiscal impact on public employers, and an “insignificant, short-term negative” fiscal impact on local and state government spending.
But this question mark of its cost was not really discussed during public hearings on S.B. 256, a bill pushed by out-of-state special interest groups and modeled after a template crafted by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The law, in brief, prohibited members of public sector unions from paying union dues through a paycheck deduction, and raised the bar for how many employees the union represents need to be dues-paying members. If fewer than 60% of the employees are dues-paying members, the union is forced to go through a costly recertification election process, or else be automatically decertified.
Critics called the law “union busting” for a reason, despite receiving eye-rolls from supporters of S.B. 256 at the time. But the numbers don’t lie. Since the law took effect, records show more than 100 bargaining units across the state have been dissolved, and more than 68,000 state and local government employees have lost their union representation. This comes at a cost not just to unions, but a cost to taxpayers as well.
As Florida lawmakers finalized the state budget last year — before S.B. 256 had even passed — they slipped in an extra $1 million for the Public Employees Relations Commission, the enforcing agency, “to implement provisions of SB 256.” This year, the agency (made up of just 30 employees) asked for, and received in their final budget an extra $500,000 from its trust fund for “contracted legal services.”
What does that mean exactly? Well, budget documents show the agency has retained outside legal counsel for at least five legal complaints filed against them, related to S.B. 256. A long-range budget plan submitted one month before the law fully took effect, in Sept. 2023, concedes that “budget amendments have been necessary to pay for legal defenses in the litigation.”
And yeah, forgive my French, but no shit. Florida teachers unions filed suit immediately, the same day that Florida Gov. DeSantis proudly signed the bill into law. Other unions, including the Communications Workers of America, a labor union that has seen four of its city employee bargaining units decertified, have also filed suit.
Since it fully took effect last October, the Commission has been drowning in elections work, and continues to suffer from extraordinary backlog. Karla Hernandez-Mats, president of Florida’s largest teachers union United Teachers of Dade, told me the agency has actually pushed back the union’s deadline for filing for a recertification election this next year, in the event United Teachers of Dade again falls short of the newly-required 60% membership threshold. It took the agency nearly a full year to conduct the first one.
Looking through budget documents, I was surprised to not find any funding requests from the Commission for additional staffing in this year’s budget. However, I’m less surprised to find that they are asking for the state to fund five new positions in the state’s next fiscal year 2025-26 budget to, in their words, “streamline the increased workload associated with the implementation of Senate Bill (SB) 256.”
“Since the implementation of SB256, the workload at PERC has increased significantly in all areas,” their request notes. They write that the agency’s caseload this past fiscal year actually doubled from the year before, “and the anticipated case load for Fiscal Year 2024-25 is expected to be even higher.”
It’s no wonder they’re asking for more help, despite the anticipated cost. Records show the five staff positions they want the state to fund — two hearing officers and three deputy clerks — would altogether cost an estimated $704,774 in salaries and benefits.
Additionally, to accommodate the additional staff, the Commission is also requesting $11,228 to rent out more office floor space. They’re also asking for $610,061 in funds for salary increases and to help establish wage parity, and $329,000 in additional funds to cover the cost of projected additional court reporting, technological enhancements (including website upgrades — thank God), and for third-party contractors to assist them in the production and processing of mail ballots for recertification elections.
Just for comparison purposes, before the new law took effect, the Commission had handled just about 60 union elections in 2021 and roughly 40 union elections in 2022.
In 2023, before the law fully took effect, the Commission received 74 petitions for elections. This year, they’ve already received more than 300 petitions for union elections — roughly five times the number of petitions they handled just a few years ago.
The majority of these petitions are for recertification elections that are now required under new regulations set forth by S.B. 256. Ronnie Burris, business agent for the Laborers International Union of North America Local 630 — which has lost nine unions to decertification over the last year — argued in an interview with me for Orlando Weekly, “They didn’t think about the Public Employees Relations Commission in Tallahassee.”
“All they wanted to do was try to get rid of as many unions as they could,” he told me, adding, “Senate Bill 256 affects everybody. It’s not just the unions that it affects.”
“Senate Bill 256 affects everybody. It’s not just the unions that it affects.”
There are other logistical nightmares the Commission has to deal with, too. I’ve been told the agency has to deal with a lot of this paperwork manually. They also have to drive to the sites of different public employers across the state to conduct these union elections. So, they’re burning through gas, hotels, and driving up their mileage.
It all comes at a cost. Not to the billionaire-funded special interest groups that asked for this law, mind you. No, that burden is placed on taxpayers, and yes, the labor unions as well. The cost of conducting a union election is, after all, split between the union and the employer.
Then, there is all of the time and resources it takes to carefully review these union election petitions. To file a petition, a union must gather signed, printed cards of support from at least 30% of the employees the union wishes to represent. In some cases, that’s literally thousands of cards.
Those then have to be reviewed by Commission staffers to ensure all of the cards actually belong to 1) employees that actually exist 2) employees that are eligible to join the union. If you’re a bus driver lumped into a stack of cards for the recertification of a teachers-only bargaining unit — sorry, that’s not going to count.
Commission staff also have to ensure employees filled out their cards correctly, and that they named the correct union and union local, specifically (yes, these details have been an issue). They have to make sure the union’s registration with the state is up to date. If it’s not, the petition is dismissed.
Moreover, the agency also does more than just conduct union elections. Similar to the National Labor Relations Board, a federal body overseeing most private sector elections that billionaires like Trump ally Elon Musk want to gut, the state Commission also reviews allegations of unfair labor practices. This requires reviewing charges to determine whether they have any merit, and may require gathering testimony and conducting hearings.
I could go on. Suffice it to say, there have been consequences of this law that were not seriously deliberated during debate and discussion of this bill in the Florida Legislature — at least not during public hearings. Instead, there was a lot of talk from supporters about ensuring “transparency” and accountability from union leaders — with some exceptions.
Police, fire, and correctional officer unions, which often endorse Republicans for office, were notably exempted from both the payroll dues deduction ban and the 60% membership threshold required under the new law. Or, they were supposed to be. Whoever crafted the bill kind of messed up that language. So, at the behest of the police and firefighter unions, its GOP bill sponsors went back to Tallahassee this year and changed the law for the favored unions, making other minor adjustments that both helped and hurt non-exempt unions.
The impact of the law, and how decertification will affect public employees who have lost their union representation as a result of it, will likely be something of a slow burn. But we’ve seen some potential consequences show up already.
When a public sector union is decertified, any existing union contract is also rendered null and void, negating any commitments made concerning wages, job benefits, workplace safety protections, or a grievance procedure.
Without a union, your boss can also privatize your job, as blue-collar workers at the University of South Florida in Tampa recently saw for themselves. Their union, affiliated with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, was decertified in January as part of the first major purge.
The state’s not hurting for money. The Governor’s Office, in announcing the finalization of the 2024-25 state budget this year, touted a reduction in overall state spending, and $17 billion in budgetary reserves. The DeSantis administration also reportedly spent millions of dollars on a state-funded ad campaign this year to oppose two statewide measures on the November ballot: Amendment 4, to restore abortion rights, and Amendment 3, to legalize recreational marijuana use for adults. Despite receiving a majority of the vote, neither surpassed the 60% threshold of support that Florida’s constitution requires for passage.
The Department of Management Services, which houses the Public Employees Relations Commission, admits in budget documents that, despite initial projections provided to state leaders ahead of S.B. 256’s enactment in 2023, the increased workload it has caused for staff “exceeded expectations.”
Allocating another $1.6 million or so for the state Commission doesn’t seem like a particularly unreasonable ask when you’re talking about a budget of over $100 billion. Then again, it’s more than the state spends on the enforcement of child labor law — to protect young workers — as the state cuts away at those labor protections, too.