Workers for Opportunity Applauds Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody
Tallahassee, FL. – The Biden Administration, including its Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su (whose confirmation continues to be on hold), is attempting to strong arm Florida policymakers – to the tune of $800 million – into revoking recently enacted paycheck protections for public employees.
When Gov. DeSantis signed these protections into law, he made Florida the national model for ensuring that public employees understand their rights to abstain or withdraw from union membership and ended the state's automatic union dues collection from employee paychecks. Further, public employees in unpopular unions with a membership of less than 60 percent of eligible public employees now enjoy the opportunity to vote on which union – if any – is granted the privilege of representing their interests.
In short, Florida put public employees in the driver's seat of exercising their union rights.
The Biden Administration is weaponizing a 60-year-old provision in the Federal Transit Act, which permits the Secretary of Labor to interpret whether laws impacting what transit employee unions can collectively bargaining over – such as automatic dues deductions by public employers – are “fair and equitable.”
We applaud Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody's actions to defend her state and transit employees. By filing suit against the Department of Labor, she demonstrates the seriousness with which Florida treats employee rights and worker freedoms. We are likewise proud to have been on the ground floor of educating lawmakers on the merits of the reforms as they advanced and passed into law.
