Dear Governor DeSantis:
Thanks to your strong leadership, Florida continues to thrive and serve as a beacon of freedom across the country.
Your commitment to the core principles of individual liberty and economic opportunity are protecting Floridians’ rights and empowering the state to prosper. Now, we encourage your continued leadership – as Florida’s foremost champion and defender of these values – to consider a policy of protecting employee freedom from government union coercion during the upcoming special legislative session.
While the House has passed reforms in the past two legislative cycles, legislation has not yet reached your desk. We believe these protections are so fundamental to our constitutional free-market values that we implore you to leverage your powers as the state executive to ensure these protections are passed before another election cycle ensues.
Specifically, the reforms we ask you to include for consideration in the upcoming special legislative session would:
- Explicitly and affirmatively protect teachers’ rights to opt in – or opt out – of a union whenever they wish.
- Give teachers and other public employees the opportunity to vote on the union vested with the power to represent them in negotiations or conversations with the state over compensation and benefits if union membership falls below 50%.
- Stop Florida taxpayers from being the bills collector for union dues.
- Inform public employees of their right to choose whether to pay union fees, thanks to the Janus v. AFSCME decision and Florida’s right-to-work law
Government union reform is the right thing to do. A recent poll by The James Madison Institute shows that 67% of all likely voters in Florida believe that unions should collect dues themselves, not have the government do it for them.
You have a unique opportunity to demonstrate a commitment to your fellow leaders in the legislature and your unfailing dedication to protecting the interests of all Floridians – especially those of Florida teachers, whose interests are certainly not always of preeminent concern to national government union leaders and their politics.
Instead we should ensure that Florida continues to be first in protecting individual liberty, fiscal responsibility, workplace freedom, a thriving economy, educational choice, and increasing opportunities for families to work, learn, and thrive.
Thank you again for standing for these values and for your willingness to take on the big fights when big fights must be won.
Sincerely,
David Osborne, CEO
Americans for Fair Treatment
Carrie Lukas, President
Independent Woman’s Forum
Heather R. Higgins, CEO
Independent Woman’s Voice
Lindsay Killen, Vice President for Strategy,
Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Workers for Opportunity
Steve Delie, Director
Workers for Opportunity
F. Vincent Vernuccio, J.D., President
Institute for the American Worker
Sal Nuzzo, Vice President of Policy
James Madison Institute
Skylar Zander, State Director
Americans for Prosperity – Florida
Americans for Prosperity – National
Alian A. Collazo,
Director of Grassroots Operations
The LIBRE Institute
Brewster Bevis, President
Associated Industries of Florida
Florida Chamber of Commerce
Rusty Brown, Director of Special Projects
Freedom Foundation
The Center for Independent Employees
Rick Berman, Executive Director
Center for Union Facts
Lisa B. Nelson, CEO
ALEC Action
Mark Janus
Victorious plaintiff in landmark 2018 U.S.
Supreme Court Case, Janus v. AFSCME