Meatball Ron: Man of the People

Republicans loathe public sector unions, especially teachers’ unions. So they have tried to hamstring them over and over. But it hasn’t worked. What this has done, both Janus and at the state level, is encourage more internal organizing and the unions haven’t retreated one bit. That’s not going to stop Ron DeSantis, truly a Man of the People. He’s pushing yet more bills to target Florida teachers’ unions.

But the clear goal of the Freedom Foundation and Gov. Ron DeSantis was to wipe out the teacher unions. And so, after losing 209 union elections, the Freedom Foundation and DeSantis are pushing a new bill – Senate Bill 1296 – through the legislature this year. And this bill rewrites the rules for those union elections. 

Under this bill, the union doesn’t just have to win with a majority of the people who decide to vote, they would now be required to have a majority of every employee in the collective bargaining unit.

CBS Miami could not find this same rule anywhere else in the country.

To understand the significance of this change, imagine if it were applied to all elections. A candidate wouldn’t have to just get a majority of the people who vote; they would have to get a majority of everyone registered to vote.

For instance, in 2022, DeSantis celebrated what he called was an historic 19-point victory over Charlie Crist, winning almost 60% of the people who voted.

But applying the proposed standard to DeSantis’ election, he only received 4.6 million of the 14.5 million registered voters. This means he only received 32% of all registered voters.

Under the proposed standard, DeSantis would have lost, and no one would be in the governor’s mansion to represent the needs of the people of Florida.

The Freedom Foundation consulted and helped draft this latest bill, which is reportedly the governor’s number one priority for this legislative session.

Senate Bill 1296 is being carried by Sen. Jonathan Martin, a Republican from Lee County. During a recent committee hearing, Martin had trouble answering basic questions about the bill or its impact. He also made it clear he did not discuss the bill with any labor leaders or union officials to try to address the concerns the bill allegedly tries to address.

Will this work? Actually, I doubt it. Without having any great knowledge about the specificity of the Florida teachers unions, this stuff really motivates people to turn out. Some won’t. It will be harder. But what is really happening here is a slow move to simply make public sector unionism illegal. I suspect we will see more bills out of Florida just stripping collective bargaining rights entirely. Of course, people could vote for different critters to be in their legislature…..