Introduction
Florida law currently requires government employers to engage in collective bargaining with labor unions representing public employees.
The scope of such negotiations is extremely broad. While state law requires public employers to negotiate with labor unions over “wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment,” it contains few other provisions governing the nature of unions’ interactions with taxpayer-funded government agencies and personnel. As a result, many government unions have taken advantage of the lack of guardrails to use the bargaining process to secure taxpayer support for union activities and even political advocacy.
Local teachers unions in Florida are generally affiliated with the Florida Education Association (FEA), itself an affiliate of both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the two largest teachers unions in the country. Consequently, much of the dues paid by Florida educators go to support the operations and political advocacy of the FEA, NEA and AFT, rather than toward local unions’ representational services.
As an organization, the NEA is as controversial as it is large. The NEA headquarters in Washington, D.C., alone reported total revenue of more than $454 million in fiscal year 2025,3 not counting the revenue retained by its hundreds, if not thousands, of state and local affiliates like the FEA. The NEA undoubtedly exerts more influence over the policies and operations of American public schools than any other private special interest group.
Moreover, the influence wielded by the NEA is not limited to education policy. From supporting unrestricted increases to the U.S. debt ceiling, to opposing policies seeking to preserve and protect women’s sports, picking sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict, backing abortion without limit, and supporting gun confiscation, there is essentially no major policy debate in which the NEA does not seek to exert its considerable influence.
The AFT is second to the NEA in size but its D.C. headquarters still reported total revenue of over $273 million in the 2024-25 school year. The AFT is just as aggressive in its push for extreme progressive ideology as the NEA, supporting everything from a government takeover of healthcare to strict gun control and “full scope” abortion access. The AFT has also defended critical race theory, claiming “the whitelash against CRT spectacularly bears out CRT’s critique of structural racism,” and declared itself “all in” for the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz presidential ticket.
In 2021, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board declared, “The NEA and AFT have become the ideological and institutional vanguard of progressive politics. They are a powerful wing of the Democratic Party…”
Again in 2023, the editorial board put it even more frankly with an article titled, “Government Unions Love Democrats” — this time making the observation about not only the NEA and AFT, but also the country’s two other largest government unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
Both SEIU and AFSCME represent various public employees in Florida and, like the NEA and AFT, use millions of dollars in members’ dues to promote a divisive political and ideological agenda that includes everything from defunding the police to opposing limits on gender-reassignment surgery for children, equating GOP-backed voter ID laws to “racist voter suppression,” pushing for federal legislation to override state right-to-work laws, and accusing President Trump of harboring “white supremacists in the White House.”
Overt politics aside, even the more mundane employment matters addressed by government unions in collective bargaining carry significant policy implications.
As the U.S. Supreme Court explained at length in its landmark 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME:
- “‘[I]t is impossible to argue that the level of… state spending for employee benefits… is not a matter of great public concern.’”
- “Take the example of education… The public importance of subsidized union speech is especially apparent in this field, since educators make up by far the largest category of state and local government employees, and education is typically the largest component of state and local government expenditures. Speech in this area also touches on fundamental questions of education policy.”
- “Even union speech in the handling of grievances may be of substantial public importance and maybe directed at the ‘public square.’”
Of course, unions have a valid role to play in giving voice to employees in workplace matters and, as private organizations, are and should be free to advocate for any causes or political candidates they like, so long as they do it with their own funds derived from voluntary memberships freely purchased by the union’s members.
The problem is that government unions like the NEA specifically encourage their affiliates to prioritize certain “essentials to a strong union contract” that involve securing special legal privileges at taxpayers’ expense. In many states, government unions have implemented these practices to effectively rope taxpayers into subsidizing union activity and advocacy, thereby inflating their influence.
Florida is no exception.
The Freedom Foundation’s review of 200 current and recent collective bargaining agreements negotiated with government employers in Florida has identified at least four ways in which unions benefit from government funding, facilities, resources and personnel:
1. Taxpayer-funded paid time off for union activity
Of the 200 union contracts analyzed, at least 111 require Florida taxpayers to foot some or all of the bill for public employees’ time spent engaged in union activity or advocacy during the workday. The total cost to taxpayers could easily run tens of millions of dollars per year, if not more.
2. Mandatory union meetings
At least 58 of the contracts allow unions to participate in — and in many cases, solicit membership during — the employer’s new hire orientation process or other mandatory meetings for public employees, with little or no apparent ability for employees to opt-out.
3. Enhanced access to public employees’ personal information
At least 67 of the contracts require government officials to turn over employees’ personal contact information to the union including, in some cases, information that any other organization or member of the public would be prohibited from acquiring under the Florida Public Records Law.
4. Privileged access to and use of government facilities and resources
At least 133 of the contracts grant the union reduced or no-cost access to and use of government facilities, equipment and communications systems far above and beyond what community groups or even competing unions are entitled to.
Thankfully, recent legislation awaiting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature will better balance the interests of government and taxpayers, though Florida lawmakers can and should do more to prevent the use of taxpayer funds and government facilities to preferentially benefit unions.
