Legislative lowdown: Florida enacts anti-union law for public sector employers

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill into law that’s expected to weaken public sector unions’ bargaining power.

The measure, which is set to take effect July 1, will raise the bar that public employees need to clear in order to win and maintain a union, requiring at least 50% of workers in a bargaining unit to vote in the election; previously there was no such participation threshold. More than 50% of those workers must also vote in favor of the union.

Additionally, unions will be required to undergo recertification if more than 60% of workers in the bargaining unit—a term that describes the group of workers represented by the union—haven’t submitted membership forms or paid dues.

The law is likely to affect employers in sectors like education, public utilities, and healthcare. There are exceptions for unions representing police and firefighters.

Targeting teachers’ unions. DeSantis specifically called out teachers’ unions when signing the bill into law, arguing they deduct dues from paychecks with the promise of improving working conditions, only to engage in “partisan political activism.” Florida’s teachers’ unions have historically endorsed and donated money to Democratic candidates, whereas the unions exempted from the law (police, firefighters) skew Republican.

A second measure that the governor signed will bar unions from participating in discussions with their school districts about pay incentives that would bring select teachers to low-performing schools. It was spurred by an incident in Lee County when a teachers union fought such an effort. The president of a teachers union in Pinellas, a separate county in Florida, told the Tampa Bay Times they hadn’t encountered such roadblocks when negotiating teacher pay.

What Florida employers should know. These latest measures add to already existing requirements for public sector unions that were enacted in 2023. Under that legislation, public employers are barred from deducting union dues automatically from workers’ paychecks.

More than 63,000 public sector employees lost union representation in the wake of the 2023 law, an analysis from NPR affiliate WLRN found.

Florida is one of more than two dozen states that has a right-to-work statute, meaning unions can’t charge employees dues if they choose not to join. Some 6.2% of Florida employees were represented by unions in 2025, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data.