Florida Teachers Say They Were ‘Coerced’ to Join Union Amid Membership Push

A school bus is parked at a depot in Pembroke Pines, Fla., on April 19, 2023. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Two Florida teachers have accused a Miami-Dade County teachers union of strong-arming them into joining its ranks amid the state’s adoption of higher certification standards for unions.

Two Nov. 13 complaints filed with the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) and obtained by The Epoch Times charge that organizers for United Teachers of Dade (UTD) cornered two public school teachers during work hours to “coerce” them into joining and paying dues.

In one case, a teacher who had recently resigned her UTD membership in July reported being asked by her school’s vice principal on Aug. 25 to go to the teachers’ lounge to meet with a UTD representative.

Once there, she was allegedly asked why she had not already joined the union. She replied: “I used to be a UTD building steward, and I was so disgusted with the union that I left it. Why would I want to pay dues?”

The complaint argues that the vice principal’s request in this situation implied “an official requirement to comply” given the official’s authority over the teacher in question.

“The UTD organizer knew asking the vice principal to direct [redacted] to meet with the organizer lends the authority of the School to the recruiter’s purpose in being there,” the complaint held, adding that the move “infuriated” the teacher in question.

The second complaint claims that, either on or around Aug. 25, a teacher at Miami Springs Senior High was stopped on her way to the restroom by the school’s union steward and a UTD organizer, who told her that she was a UTD member and needed to sign up to pay her dues.

The teacher responded that she didn’t want to be a union member anymore and had no desire to sign up or pay dues. The organizer, however, purportedly continued to pressure her to do so.

The teacher then reiterated her disinterest and pushed past the organizer to enter the teachers’ lounge restroom. After she did, however, the organizer allegedly raised her voice to a level where the teacher could hear her say, “Some people are never satisfied no matter what you do for them,” and “You can’t please some people no matter how hard you fight for them.”

The confrontation, according to the complaint, took place in front of five to 10 other individuals and made the complainant feel “bullied and belittled.”

Then, days later, the same teacher was reportedly approached in the school hallway by a different UTD organizer, who insisted that she was a UTD member and needed to sign up to pay her dues. Again, the teacher repeated that she no longer considered herself a member and had no interest in paying dues.

The organizers’ repeated pressuring, the complaint adds, made the teacher feel “harassed” and as if they were creating “additional undue pressure on her already demanding job.”

Against the Law

Florida law prohibits unions and their representatives from “interfering with, restraining, or coercing” a public employee in the exercise of their right to join or refrain from joining a union.

Noting this, both complaints request that the PERC order UTD to cease “coercing” teachers to join the union and pay dues. They also seek written apologies from the union and distribution of a notice to all its members stating that it committed an unfair labor practice by violating their rights.

The teachers’ complaints follow Florida’s recent enactment of a law requiring public sector unions to meet a dues-paying membership threshold of at least 60 percent of all eligible employees to remain certified. The law also allows public employees to revoke their union membership at any time with a written statement.

And that law—already the subject of a legal dispute between the state of Florida and the Biden administration—is likely the driving force behind UTD’s actions, according to the teachers’ attorney, Allison Beattie.

“That’s why they’ve been so aggressive and just hounding these teachers to try to get them to sign up for dues payment and everything, because that’s how they get to their number that they need,” she told The Epoch Times. “But from what we know, they have not met the number that they need.”

Freedom Foundation

Ms. Beattie is representing both teachers on behalf of the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank that aims to “liberate” public employees from exploitative union practices.

“We work specifically with public sector employees who are members of unions and we give them the information that they need to decide whether or not they want to opt out of their union. Or, if they have issues with their union and need legal representation, we assist them with that.”

According to Ms. Beattie, her organization became aware of the situation in Miami-Dade County after local teachers reached out over the summer to express frustration with how UTD was being run.

“It has just a really long history of corruption, and a lot of teachers down there just really fed up with it,” she said. “So initially, we were contacted by some teachers who are interested in essentially starting a rival union—which we’re assisting them with—and we met these teachers.”

She added that the PERC has yet to take any action on the complaints she filed but may decide to conduct its own fact finding before holding a hearing.

The Epoch Times has contacted the American Federation of Teachers, of which UTD is an affiliate, for comment.