Trump just screwed over Florida's public transit unions
A change of opinion from the Department of Labor, under the Trump administration, could put the survival of Florida's mass public transit unions at risk.
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In just another example of how the Trump administration may very well serve to undermine organized labor across the country, and here at home in Florida, Trump’s Department of Labor has given Florida’s union-hostile state government the go-ahead to enforce new rules and regulations on Florida’s mass transit unions. You know, the ones that represent workers employed by local transit authorities, such as Central Florida’s LYNX system or the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority.
See, when Florida lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a highly controversial union reform law (SB 256) in 2023 — designed to undermine many of the state’s public sector unions — transit unions warned lawmakers that forcing them to comply with the law could risk forfeiting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds for public transit projects.
Their argument was that undermining transit employees’ collective bargaining rights (by threatening the existence of their unions, for example) would run afoul of federal grant eligibility requirements under the Federal Transit Act. That federal law, among other things, ensures that transit workers’ collective bargaining rights are protected before federal transit money can be provided to local transit agencies. Such agencies in Florida, including the aforementioned LYNX system, receive millions of dollars from the federal government to support their operations, as well as transit-related projects.
So, to say the very least, it would be a loss.
Transit unions warned Florida lawmakers, ahead of SB 256’s passage, that they needed to be carved out of the law (along with the GOP’s favored police, firefighter, and correctional officer unions) if they didn’t want to risk missing out on federal funds that support their communities’ transportation needs. And ultimately, Republicans sort–of complied.
They offered a partial carve-out of sorts by giving transit unions the option to apply for a waiver that would allow for them to be exempted from certain provisions of SB 256 — namely, a ban on paycheck dues deductions (forbidding union members from voluntarily paying union dues through a paycheck deduction) and a requirement that at least 60 percent of employees in a bargaining unit be dues-paying members (since, in the public sector, paying union dues is completely voluntary, anyway).
This decision by Florida’s Republican lawmakers (most of whom ended up voting in favor of this law) was pressured in part by confirmation from the Biden administration at the time that the law could indeed risk federal funds, as the transit unions warned.
This confirmation from the Biden administration, however, irked state officials, including then-Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody. Moody, who has since seen herself elevated to an appointed role as U.S. Senator (replacing former U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio), filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration, claiming the Federal Transit Law (and its protective requirements for unionized transit employees) was unconstitutional.
“The Department of Labor has given Florida an ultimatum — abandon the reforms enacted through SB 256 or lose hundreds of millions in federal funding,” the lawsuit said. “Because that ultimatum is based on an unconstitutional funding condition and is otherwise contrary to law, Florida brings this suit to protect its access to critical funding and its sovereign prerogative to regulate in the realm of collective bargaining.”
The lawsuit, filed in October 2023, was pretty silly. The Biden administration hadn’t actually withheld any federal funds, as Moody’s office implied. In fact, it was my understanding (after speaking to a few sources at the time) that the Biden administration had been working with Florida’s state public sector labor relations agency — the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) — to ensure that local transit authorities in Florida could continue to receive the federal funds they needed or had otherwise requested for public transit projects.
But Moody (and/or her political ally, Ron DeSantis) wanted to make noise and pick a fight. Unfortunately for her (and, by extension, the DeSantis administration), her legal war against the Biden administration wasn’t going very well for her as of last fall.
In fact, last September, a U.S. district judge formally rejected Moody’s lawsuit, siding with the Biden administration.
“[A] reading of the statute's plain text reflects that Congress gave the DOL the authority to construe [the Federal Transit Act] to determine whether provisions that affect employee collective bargaining rights are 'fair and equitable,” U.S. District judge Melissa Damian wrote in her dismissal. Moody, of course, appealed that ruling to the 11th District Court of Appeals, where it went on to stew for several months.
Notably, that dismissal from Damian was made ahead of the 2024 presidential election that booted the (mostly) pro-labor President Joe Biden out of office. And under the Trump administration, we’ve got new labor cops in town — and now, the difference is hitting close to home.
As the News Service of Florida first reported earlier this month (bless them for their court coverage), the U.S. Department of Labor — now led by Trump appointees — decided to reverse course on their initial argument that mass transit unions needed to be exempted from SB 256’s most nefarious provisions.
In a May 29, 2025 letter, Trump’s DOL argued instead that “SB 256 does not impermissibly impact the collective bargaining rights and benefits of the transit workers” in conflict with federal law after all.
“The department acknowledges that the departure from its prior views may unsettle the expectations of interested parties,” the May 29 letter noted, with some barely-disguised sass. This “reconsideration,” the letter continued, would therefore lead to the expiration of waivers that the state had granted to at least 30 public transit unions throughout the state over the last year-and-a-half, represented by unions like the Teamsters, the Transport Workers Union, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
“Unions and their members will have to implement alternatives to payroll dues deductions,” the letter from the DOL continued. “Unions will need to ensure their registration renewal applications are accurate and in compliance with Florida's laws. Additionally, if they do not meet the 60% threshold of dues paying members when they submit their renewal application to PERC [Public Employees Relations Commission], then within 30 days of submitting that application unions also must submit a petition for recertification.”
I reached out to several unions that represent mass transit workers in the state, including the Teamsters, Transport Workers Union, and AFSCME to see if they had any response to this reversal by the DOL — and what it’ll mean for their members.
AFSCME Council 79, a union that’s lost over 30 bargaining units throughout Florida since the 2023 anti-union law took effect, told me in a statement that they “disagree” with the DOL’s move, but plan to fight to keep their transit bargaining units alive, regardless.
“Dedicated public service workers across Florida continue to join their AFSCME union every day because they see the value of their contract at work and they understand the importance of a protected voice on the job,” the union shared in a statement. “They have done this in the face of unprecedented attacks on their freedoms from the Governor and now from D.C. We strongly disagree with the Department of Labor’s move to end the important protections these waivers grant but, for the three AFSCME locals impacted, we are prepared to meet SB256 requirements to ensure their voice and their contracts are not lost.”
Florida’s anti-union law, they argued, “has only resulted in wasted taxpayer dollars and is a constant reminder to workers that they are not valued or respected by many of Florida’s elected officials.”
The Transport Workers Union, which had previously obtained waivers for three transit unions in South and Central Florida, similarly blasted the DOL’s change of course — and teased a potential fight ahead.
“The Department of Labor is ignoring sixty years of precedent to make it much easier for employers to unilaterally impose terms of employment that will do economic harm to bus operators, mechanics, cleaners, and other blue-collar workers just trying to provide for their families,” TWU International administrative vice president Curtis Tate said in a statement. “The TWU International is evaluating how best to fight this attack on working people, and to ensure our members in Florida can continue to exercise their labor rights.”
As for what’s next, one of the TWU’s bargaining units in Central Florida just renewed their registration with the state, so they have just about a full year to make plans for how they can successfully comply with the law and avoid decertification. Another one of their locals, based out of Miami, has until August before they’ll be subject to the new requirements.
This means they’ll either need to get their membership numbers up to speed (if they’re below the 60% threshold now mandated by law), or otherwise work on getting the showing-of-interest cards they’ll need from at least 30% of the employees they represent in order to file a petition with the state for recertification.
As AFSCME alluded to, all of this costs money of course — not just for the unions, but for taxpayers, too.
So far, I’ve counted 119 bargaining units throughout Florida that have been decertified since Florida’s SB 256 took effect, affecting more than 69,000 state and local government employees. And that’s not counting unions that have “voluntarily decertified” themselves, as the state puts it (i.e. disclaiming interest in continuing to represent a bargaining unit).
Most of the unions that have been decertified so far had their certification revoked because the union either failed to renew its registration with the state, or because the union had less than 60% membership density and failed to file a petition for recertification (either because they felt they would lose, the process was too costly, or that it was too resource-intensive of an endeavor to pursue).
It’s not because workers are actively voting their unions out. More so that they never got the chance to even vote on the issue at all, especially since most of these decertified unions were first organized decades ago.
Still, it’s not all bad news for the state’s organized labor movement. As I reported for Orlando Weekly earlier this month, the statewide teachers’ union, the Florida Education Association, announced that more than 100 of their bargaining units of teachers and other school staff across Florida have successfully recertified after facing the risk of decertification under this new law.
That’s thousands of workers who have stood up to the state (and the Republicans who voted for this law) and said, “Hey, actually, I want to have a union and I’m gonna stick with it, thank you very much.”
Beyond the FEA, a few dozen other unions have recertified, too, including bargaining units of largely blue-collar workers represented by unions such as AFSCME, the Teamsters, and the SEIU Florida Public Sector Union (FPSU). Others either boosted their membership numbers up enough to avoid having to go through that process, while workers belonging to several decertified bargaining units have also since petitioned the state to reinstate, or reorganize their unions.
“Workers in Florida are reaching a tipping point — inflation is impacting families daily while bureaucrats and billionaires continue to amass wealth,” said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association in a recent statement. “The power to fight back comes from workers’ unions.”