Organized labor appears to be split on Florida's abortion rights measure
While one prominent healthcare worker union is a key partner in the campaign to enshrine abortion rights in Florida's constitution, the Florida AFL-CIO has opted not to endorse the initiative.
As Democrats rely on abortion as a key issue to propel them to victory this November, a multi-million dollar campaign to enshrine abortion rights into Florida’s state constitution — backed by one of the state’s largest healthcare worker unions — is surprisingly (or not) receiving mixed support from the state’s labor movement.
The Florida American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), made up of over 500 local labor unions, decided not to endorse the proposed constitutional amendment, which will appear on the ballot this fall as Amendment 4. The proposal, spearheaded by the political committee Floridians Protecting Freedom, reads in part that no “law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider.”
If approved by more than 60% of Florida voters, the measure would legalize abortion procedures up to fetal viability, equal to roughly 24 to 28 weeks of pregnancy. Currently, Florida law prohibits abortion after six weeks, with limited exceptions.
One of the central partners in the campaign to strengthen abortion rights — along with Planned Parenthood, the ACLU of Florida, and other liberal organizations — is the 1199 Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a healthcare arm of the SEIU that represents more than 25,000 healthcare workers, including hospital and nursing home staff.
Notably, the SEIU is unaffiliated with the Florida AFL-CIO, a body that represents more than one million working Floridians, retirees and their families through its union affiliates.
Unlike the SEIU, the Florida AFL-CIO is not a union, per se, but a federation of union affiliates that, as union activist C.M Lewis explains, has no direct role in organizing or the collective bargaining process, although it can offer organizing support, generally through its Central Labor Councils. The federation has little authority to “influence or direct” affiliates, Lewis notes, “beyond what affiliates accede.”
An endorsement from the labor federation for the ballot measure would have required a super-majority vote of support from union delegates this year at the federation’s Committee on Political Education (COPE) Endorsing Convention, which is held every two years. According to the federation, which hosted its convention last month, over 200 union activists and leaders attended as delegates, respectively representing their unions’ membership.
While Amendment 4 did receive majority support from delegates, when brought to a vote, I’ve learned it did not receive the super-majority necessary to receive a formal endorsement. Thus, the federations’ official position reads: ‘No Endorsement.’
It’s not a rejection of the measure, but demonstrates that the federation opted not to take a position on the issue, all the same.
What this means, broadly speaking, is that the federation will not encourage a vote of support for Amendment 4, nor will affiliates be asked to canvass or knock doors for the initiative. Endorsements from organized labor, after all, are meant to signify more than just words. This generally comes with a commitment of boots-on-the-ground work, which we have historically seen in practice during past election cycles on a local, state, and national level to help advance a pro-labor agenda.
Labor unions — individually, as affiliates, or through their Central Labor Councils — can help mobilize their working-class membership to knock doors for candidates and initiatives that they believe will advance the interests of working people. In 2022, for instance, members of UNITE HERE independently knocked doors for Orange County’s rent control initiative, a local ballot measure that sought to cap rent hikes at roughly 10% for one year (the initiative passed, but industry groups filed a lawsuit to block it, and won.) Local CLCs have also mobilized members to knock doors for local and state candidates running for office.
What this ‘No Endorsement’ position on Amendment 4 does not do, I should add, is prevent individual affiliates of the Florida AFL-CIO from endorsing the abortion rights measure themselves. That is, if individual unions want to endorse and mobilize membership to support Amendment 4, I’m told they are perfectly welcome to do so.
Still, this position of the Florida AFL-CIO — operating in a state that has historically been hostile to labor unions, in addition to reproductive freedom — is notable in that it is at odds with the national AFL-CIO’s public support for reproductive rights, and even past comments made by Florida AFL-CIO staff and union leaders.
Last year, the Florida AFL-CIO itself publicly denounced efforts by state lawmakers to restrict abortion rights ahead of a successful effort by Republicans to do so. “The Florida Legislature is in full attack mode right now and is rapidly pushing policies ranging from the misguided to the absolutely insane,” the organization wrote in a March 2023 blog post, just a day before the start of the 2023 legislative session. “They want to defund public schools, take over local governments, eliminate free speech on our college campuses, censor the press, take away women’s reproductive rights and eliminate the basic rights of our public sector workers.”
The obvious implication is that undermining reproductive rights is a bad thing that the federation opposes. The national AFL-CIO, altogether representing 12.5 million U.S. workers, has similarly framed abortion access as a workers’ rights and economic justice issue, even offering example contract language that unions can fight for in order to protect members’ access to abortion care.
“No one should feel like their doors of opportunity are slammed shut based on their pregnancy status. No one should worry about losing their paycheck or job to travel hundreds of miles to see a doctor. And no one should have their collectively bargained health care benefits infringed upon by laws that criminalize doctors and their patients,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision on Jan. 22, 2024.
Florida’s state affiliate is made up of a wide array of public and private sector unions, with locals representing everyone from construction workers, to hospitality, municipal and healthcare workers. Notably, this includes National Nurses United — a militant craft union of registered nurses (with a moderate presence in Florida) that has also come out in fierce opposition to abortion bans, characterizing such restrictions as class warfare.
An report from the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute, published last year, found that states with tighter abortion restrictions, including Florida, are “economically disempowering” working people in a number of ways. Such states, the report shared, were more likely to have lower minimum wages, lower rates of Medicaid expansion, a higher incarceration rate, lower unionization levels, and a weaker unemployment insurance system. Workers in the South are also less likely than workers in other regions to receive employer-provided health insurance, paid sick leave, or a pension.
As labor journalist Kim Kelly wrote in 2022 for In These Times, “We are living through a public health crisis, a housing crisis, a climate crisis, an economic inequality crisis and a political crisis. Bringing a child into this world should be a choice, not an order.”
Yet, in Florida — and for much of the U.S. South that had for years depended on Florida for access to abortion care — the decision of whether to go through with or terminate a pregnancy has become less of a choice, with the poor and low-income women of color in particular being the least likely to have funds to travel for abortion, or to have the time to take off of work or other responsibilities in order to do so.
While abortion funds try to help fill that gap, by offering financial assistance and logistical support, those in Florida are already overwhelmed. The nearest states with less restrictive rules on abortion procedures are Virginia — which allows abortion up to 26 weeks — and North Carolina, which allows abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
From a labor perspective, abortion bans — including Florida’s — also put healthcare providers at risk for criminal liability. Doctors worry such (understandable) fears could have broader effects on access to healthcare in Florida, and may prompt healthcare providers to leave the state, as they have in other states that have also enacted harsher rules on abortion, according to the Associated Press.
Nobody connected to the Florida AFL-CIO, or affiliates I reached out to would share with me what exactly happened at their endorsing convention on-the-record. Delegates, I’ve been told, are required to take an oath to keep all internal proceedings of the endorsement process during the convention private. Fair enough.
What we know
A decent share of delegates in attendance at the Florida AFL-CIO’s COPE convention come from local teachers’ unions, which make up a large swath of Florida’s unionized public sector, thereby increasing their voting power. Altogether, teachers unions represent more than 150,000 teachers, school counselors, and other school staff across the state — despite repeated efforts by the Republican majority to weaken their power and shrink their numbers.
Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association — a statewide teachers’ union affiliated with the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers — declined to make himself available for an interview about the decision on Amendment 4 and the FEA’s role in the endorsement vote. Instead, a spokesperson for the union told me over email that while union leaders agreed to oppose Amendment 1, a Republican-backed ballot measure that seeks to make school board races partisan, they “took no position” on the abortion rights measure, or any other amendments on the ballot this November.
The FEA notes in their voter toolkit for members that “How you vote is a personal decision,” adding that “When educators vote, students win!”
It does matter to an arguable extent who is elected to represent working-class communities (and teachers) in the state legislature. Teachers unions, for instance, were a prominent target of a new anti-union law passed by the Republican-controlled legislature last year. It was a highly controversial affair that saw few GOP dissidents.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who afterward went on to launch a wildly unsuccessful bid for U.S. President, haughtily touted the law as “paycheck protection,” borrowing the phrase from the corporate-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other Republican leaders before him who have championed similar anti-union policies in other states.
The pressure for unions to avoid decertification under the law is high — and has forced unions into survival mode.
Since the law’s enactment, over 50,000 public sector workers — from school bus drivers, to municipal and sanitation employees — have lost their union representation, mostly due to low membership numbers that fell short of new requirements. The new law, known as Senate Bill (S.B.) 256, sets new minimum membership thresholds for public sector unions and bans payroll dues deductions.
None of the dozens of unions that have been decertified so far have been teachers unions. But more public employees, including teachers, could be next, without a strong show of support for continued representation.
A divisive issue in an increasingly-red state
Granted, abortion can be a politically divisive issue, and is not an issue generally driving contract talks. Although a six-week ban on abortion is broadly unpopular among Floridians, including a majority of Republicans and Independents, conservative opponents to the ballot measure have launched a well-funded, misleading opposition campaign to spook Floridians away from voting in favor of the initiative.
Florida has trended increasingly red in recent years, and while most attacks on unions in Florida are singularly driven by Republicans, not all union members in Florida identify as liberals, even if their unions often, if not exclusively, endorse Democrats for state office who oppose abortion bans. Several union leaders and activists who spoke out against the anti-union law last year self-identified themselves as conservatives.
Recent polling suggests that Republican support for Amendment 4 is currently pretty split: According to a recent Fox News poll, 69% of polled Floridians said they would support establishing a right to abortion, including 50% of Republicans. A poll released in May, conducted by CBS News and YouGov, found that 41% of Republicans support legalizing abortion in most or all cases.
Despite a lack of broad consensus in Florida’s ‘House of Labor,’ some leaders in the labor movement have also been vocal in their support of Amendment 4. Karla Hernandez-Mats, president of the state’s largest local teachers’ union — United Teachers of Dade — has publicly encouraged others to vote in favor of Amendment 4.
“Far right extremism in Florida has trumped-up women’s reproductive rights,” Mats wrote in a May social media post on X. “It’s time to take back our freedoms and vote YES on Amendment 4.”
During the 2022 election cycle, Mats also publicly supported abortion rights during her campaign for lieutenant governor, as the running mate of Democratic candidate for governor Charlie Crist. Mats declared in one social media post, published in Oct. 2022, that the pair would veto any bill restricting abortion that came across the governor’s desk.
DeSantis easily won reelection that year, however, and his administration has since sought to vilify UTD, along with billionaire-backed allies who are seeking to dismantle it.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) — two unions the FEA is affiliated with — have also both shared statements in support of reproductive rights.
Then, of course, there’s the SEIU, which has mobilized members in Florida to rally in support for Amendment 4. Here in Orlando, I saw at least a few dozen people in purple SEIU shirts at campaign kickoff for Amendment 4 in April, mostly donned by women and people of color.
Campaign finance records show the union is also putting its money where its mouth is on the issue. Several political committees affiliated with SEIU, based in New York, Washington D.C., Florida, and other states, have altogether contributed more than $800,000 to the ballot initiative campaign since its launch last May — a figure that includes “in-kind” contributions for staff time and fundraising materials.
Where labor been in other states with abortion on the ballot
Since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion under Roe v. Wade, voters in seven states — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont, Montana, and Ohio — have had the chance to weigh in on the issue of abortion — and in all cases, those in favor of protecting abortion rights have prevailed. According to KFF, up to 11 additional states will have abortion-related measures on their own state ballots this year, including Florida.
While I couldn’t find position statements for all states, it appears there’s some variation in labor’s approach to the issue. A similar initiative to Amendment 4 that will be on Maryland’s statewide ballot this fall, for instance, has received the endorsement of the Maryland AFL-CIO, the Maryland State Education Association and 1199 SEIU — although, sure, it’s worth noting the difference in political dynamics here. Maryland’s governor, Democrat Wes Moore, has endorsed the abortion rights ballot measure, while Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is so opposed to the Florida measure that he recently launched a PAC that aims to, in part, defeat Amendment 4.
An abortion rights initiative in Colorado has similarly been endorsed by the Colorado AFL-CIO, as well as individual unions such as Denver Health Workers United and the Colorado Nurses Association. A tentative ‘right to abortion’ initiative in Arizona has gained the support of the Arizona AFL-CIO, while a 2022 ballot measure in Michigan similarly got a strong show of support from organized labor last election cycle, with endorsements from the Michigan AFL-CIO, along with individual unions affiliated with UNITE HERE, National Nurses United, the AFT of Michigan, and others.
Florida, again, is unique in some of the issues that unions, specifically public sector unions, are currently grappling with. Endorsing politically-divisive issues might be seen as too big a risk.
After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade decision in 2022, a number of AFL-CIO state affiliates in other, mostly bluer states released statements critical of the ruling, including those in California, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
The Texas AFL-CIO, for its part — similarly operating in Republican-controlled territory — condemned the passage of Texas’ 2021 “heartbeat” bill, which prohibits abortion after a “fetal heartbeat” has been detected. The labor body described the bill, in a 2022 resolution approved through its own state convention, as “an extreme, ideological measure that goes way beyond any substantive debate on abortion in a way that clearly threatens livelihoods and public health of not only women, but all working people.”
I’m curious to see if any local unions in Florida — within or outside of the AFL-CIO — go a different route and opt to endorse Amendment 4 ahead of Election Day. So if you hear anything, or if you’re a union member in Florida with thoughts on the federation’s ‘No endorsement’ position, drop a comment below or shoot me an email.