Tallahassee, FL — The Freedom Foundation urged Gov. Ron DeSantis to sign SB 1296 into law after the Florida House of Representatives passed the bill today with overwhelming support.
The pro-worker bill gives a voice to all of Florida’s government employees by closing a longstanding loophole that allows unions to claim exclusive representation over an entire workforce based on turnout from just a fraction of the employees they would legally control.
The Florida Senate approved the measure on March 6.
Under current law, a union can win certification — and with it, the sole legal right to speak for every employee in a bargaining unit — through a simple majority of ballots cast, even though only a small fraction of the workforce participated in the election.
SB 1296 would change that by requiring at least 50 percent of the bargaining unit to cast ballots before an election result is considered valid, ensuring unions cannot claim exclusive representation on the basis of turnout from a tiny slice of the workers.
The need for this reform became clear in the wake of SB 256, which Florida adopted in 2023. That law required unions to maintain 60 percent dues-paying membership or stand for re-election.
Several unions representing more than 70,000 Florida employees were decertified for lack of support. Yet even among unions that survived, many prevailed with backing from less than 30 percent of their bargaining unit.
In some cases, as few as 1 percent of the workers a union legally represented had actually voted for it.
“Florida already proved that when you hold unions accountable to the workers they claim to speak for, many can’t clear even a basic threshold of support,” said Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe. “Let’s not forget the difference between membership and representation. SB 1296 closes the remaining loophole. If a union is going to hold exclusive legal authority over every employee in a bargaining unit, it should at least be able to say that a majority of those employees actually chose them. That’s not a high bar. That’s just democracy.”
The bill also limits taxpayer-funded paid leave for union activities to legitimate representational work — contract negotiations and grievance proceedings — rather than lobbying, political campaigning or member recruitment.
Employees who wish to engage in those activities may do so using unpaid leave, their own accrued PTO, or voluntarily pooled PTO from colleagues.
Gov. DeSantis has long championed worker freedom in Florida. Signing SB 1296 would build on the landmark reforms he enacted in 2023 and ensure that public employees, not union bosses, have control over who represents them at the bargaining table.
