Miami-Dade Teachers Union Up Against The Clock

Public sector unions throughout the state of Florida have been plugging away for months to collect dues in compliance with a new law passed in May by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The union representing Miami-Dade County Public Schools is now in the crosshairs because of it.

Senate Bill 256 has sent a potentially fatal blow to United Teachers of Dade (UTD), which represents more than 25,000 workers. The legislation, sponsored by Republican Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, increased the number of union members that must pay dues while simultaneously complicating payment collection. It bans unions from automatically deducting dues from workers’ paychecks, requiring each member to set up a payment plan instead.

Since the bill took effect in July, UTD has been helping members navigate the new rules regulated by the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC), all while struggling to do so itself.

“We barely have five months to move the entire bargaining unit and union over to a new form of dues membership collection,” said Karla Hernández-Mats, UTD president. “It is a heavy, heavy lift. We’re talking about over 13,000 members.”

As of Nov. 10, those more than 13,000 members represented 58.4% of the union’s bargaining unit, just short of the newly required 60%. A week later, the school district took a snapshot of UTD’s updated numbers, which are now being audited for verification.

The union has until mid-December to prove to the state that it has reached the new threshold. Otherwise, it faces decertification.

It sounds simple enough, albeit trying, but much of UTD’s efforts have been conducted blindly and in the dark. Hernández-Mats says PERC has made the process painfully confusing and ambiguous, removing information from its website with hardly a day’s notice.

“Today we stand here with the uncertainty of our status because the Public Employee Relations Commission has intentionally created chaos,” she said at a Nov. 16 press conference. “We are submitting data despite the incomplete information of what the expectations are and what precisely needs to be submitted to comply with these anti-worker laws.”

Hernández-Mats and Tony White, UTD’s vice president, are nevertheless optimistic about their numbers. White says the union has been able to secure 800 additional paying members in the past five months, representing the fastest growth they’ve ever seen.

In 2022, approximately 51% of UTD members were paying dues.

Looming election

The fight does not end if and when UTD fails to reach the 60%. The union would still have the opportunity to force a recertification election – if enough of its members want it.

UTD would have to collect what are known as show-of-interest cards from 30% of its employees, which the union has never had to do before. Typically, White explained, all members of the bargaining unit would then choose whether they want to be represented by the exclusive bargaining agent – in this case, UTD – or no union at all.

A potentially third choice is a new player that has risen in recent months. The Miami-Dade Education Coalition (MDEC) is a brand-new organization vying for the seat as M-DCPS’s next teachers union, actively attempting to dwindle UTD support and recruit its members.

MDEC is only required by federal law to collect 10% of show-of-interest cards in order to intervene in the election. It is unclear how much support the organization has, although a video released by its sponsor, the Freedom Foundation, shows a handful of M-DCPS teachers and employees bashing UTD and supporting MDEC.

Yet word around town is that it’s a load of baloney.

Things get political

The Freedom Foundation is a right-wing think tank funded by billionaire organizations like the Koch family foundations and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Rusty Brown, director of special projects at the Freedom Foundation, spoke rather candidly within a CBS report released in October about how the organization has weakened unions nationwide, already costing them more than $250 million.

Brown also wrote SB 256.

“We just have to be clear of what’s really going on here,” said White. “This is a coordinated effort … to attempt to eliminate teachers unions in general, but more specifically, United Teachers of Dade.”

The Freedom Foundation has funded MDEC with hundreds of thousands of dollars, sending mail pieces to UTD members, recruiting and paying teachers to attend an all-expenses paid conference in Colorado, building MDEC’s website and hiring lawyers. Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz Jr. was the keynote speaker at the Colorado conference.

Although anti-union legislation is not new to the state and the Freedom Foundation dates back to 1991, UTD members believe the most recent attacks are targeted at unions that did not endorse DeSantis in his 2022 reelection campaign. SB 256 exempts police, firefighter and correctional officers unions, all of which have supported DeSantis over the years.

Hernández-Mats also ran directly against DeSantis as former candidate Charlie Crist’s running mate.

She and White say it is unclear when the recertification election would take place and in what form, although MDEC’s website claims that the new union must collect 3,000 show-of-interest cards from M-DCPS employees by January 2024.

“It just boggles my mind that someone would actually believe that a group whose sole purpose over the last decade or so has been to destroy unions is now going to help them form a new one,” said White.

What’s at stake

UTD ratified its newest contract this summer with a record-breaking 91% of members voting in support. The contract secured pay increases of 7-10%, increased credential pay, a free insurance option for all employees, flat costs for the remaining health care plans, duty-free planning and lunch, seven-hour-and-twenty-minute workdays, contractual evening hours and more.

Some of those benefits are new and improved, but a lot of the terms that M-DCPS teachers rely on for a healthy work environment have been negotiated over a period of nearly 50 years since UTD was founded in 1974.

“All of these things that we kind of take for granted because they’ve always been there, people are now recognizing that they’re at stake now,” said White.

MDEC says it would bargain for better wages and benefits and cut union dues by at least half. It adds that the UTD contract would remain in place until a new agreement between M-DCPS and MDEC is reached, thanks to federal status quo laws which typically protect workers during the bargaining process. It is unclear, however, what would happen if the two parties cannot reach an agreement.

Besides, White contradicts that view, claiming that the UTD contract would not stand if the very bargaining agent that ratified it ceases to exist.

“[MDEC] would have to start from scratch,” he said. “Our people wouldn’t have a contract because anyone with common sense knows that contracts are between two parties and they’re not transferable … But I don’t know how you start from scratch in the largest district in the state without the resources to do that.”

Hernández-Mats foresees a dire future if the Freedom Foundation gets its way, warning of a “mass exodus of teachers” from the classroom already fed up with book bans and revised history standards.

“We are not just defending our jobs,” said Hernández-Mats. “We are protecting the future of our children and the well-being of our community.”

“This is just the space that we’re in now in education in the state of Florida,” White said. “It’s a very dangerous space, but we’ll survive this too. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”