What happens if Miami-Dade teachers in FL don’t reach their union’s threshold for membership?

The largest education union in Florida is facing the ramifications of new legislation meant to make labor organizing for public workers more difficult.

United Teachers of Dade — which represents public educators in Miami-Dade, Florida’s largest county, will face a decertification process if they can’t reach 60% membership by eligible members. By their last count, the union had 58.4% membership on Nov. 10, according to the Miami Herald.

The “Employee Organizations Representing Public Employees” bill — SB 256 — was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in May and went into effect the following summer. It stipulates that a public sector union must have 60% of its eligible employees pay dues to avoid a decertification process. Previously, the threshold had been 50 percent.

However, the bill also no longer allows unions to collect dues directly from members’ paychecks. It also exempts police and firefighter unions. Annual dues for UTD members are determined at 1.6% of the base beginning teacher’s salary, plus mandated increases for fees or insurance premiums. 

If the union does not meet the threshold, it must submit a petition to the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) — a three-member commission that oversees the new union regulations. Unions must include with the petition “valid showing of interest statements signed by at least 30% of the employees in the unit,” according to a PERC factsheet.

Miami-Dade has the most students and teachers of any public school district in Florida, according to a state Department of Education survey from 2022-2023. The dissolution of the Miami-Dade union would threaten labor representation for 20,729 public instructional staff in the district, including teachers, guidance counselors, and librarians.

And public-school districts elsewhere could be in the same boat.

Neither PERC nor United Teachers of Dade, respectively, responded to a request for comment.

Teacher unions have been a frequent punching bag of DeSantis.

“For far too long, unions and rogue school boards have pushed around our teachers, misused government funds for political purposes, taken money from teachers’ pockets to steer it for purposes other than representation of teachers, and sheltered their true political goals from the educators they purport to represent,” DeSantis said when he signed SB 256.

Here’s state education data on staff in Florida in public schools, which could relate to eligible union membership: