A lawsuit filed Tuesday by a coalition of Florida teachers unions argues that the labor groups shouldn’t have to prove they have the backing of a majority of the educators and other workers in the schools they represent.
The lawsuit is a reaction to a new state law that would decertify teachers unions if the unions cannot prove that most of the people the union represents actually wants it to be there. Unions allege the law is purely an attack on them.
“[The law] unfairly targets teachers unions — and teachers unions alone — for decertification as local bargaining agents,” the unions, lead by the Florida Education Association, said in a press release.
The lawsuit seeks to invalidate a section in a new state education law that became effective Sunday.
The language says that should a union’s membership fall to less than half of the people in the workplace eligible to join, then the union must ask the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission to hold a new workplace election. If less than half the eligible workers back the union in that vote, then the union loses its status as the worker’s representative.
The Florida unions argued that that was an unfair standard. “The Recertification Requirement abridges (workers’ rights) by presuming that majority support is measured by or put in doubt by the number of employees who have become dues-paying members of the union. There is no compelling state interest justifying this abridgement,” said the lawsuit. “[T]he number of dues-paying members is an invalid means for determining whether the union has majority support at any particular time.”
The same lawsuit also makes the novel claim that the law violates the state’s “right to work” law, which prohibits workers from being compelled to financially support a union. The unions argues that nonunion workers will now be “compelled and coerced to join a union” in order “to ensure that continued union representation is not put at risk” — ignoring the fact that not joining indicates the workers didn’t want support in the first place.
Supporters of the law said they expected the lawsuit to fail. “It doesn’t surprise me that they’re filing a lawsuit and chances are over the next few years they’re going to have many more reasons to file lawsuits if choice and education are problems for them,” incoming House Speaker Jose Oliva, R-Miami-Dade, told the Tampa Bay Tribune.
The lawsuit came just days after the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees that public sector workers cannot be compelled to financially support a union, a previously common requirement of union-management contracts.
