FLORIDA HOUSE PASSES BILL BANNING GOVERNMENT COLLECTION OF UNION DUES AT TAXPAYERS' EXPENSE

[J.R.]

This welcome vote in the Florida Legislature puts the members of the Florida House of Representatives on the side of Florida taxpayers.  Now the cost of collecting union dues will be the responsibility and expense of the unions, themselves. For years, Florida taxpayers have been taxed more on their car insurance and homeowner's insurance to subsidize local and state government collection of union dues. Hopefully, the indirect taxes that taxpayers have unfairly been required to unvoluntarily pay to cover a cost that benefitted only labor unions, will no longer be a required tax burden for them.

Now that the bill has passed the House by a large margin, it will go to the Senate, where it it is expected to pass.  After the Senate passes the bill, it will go to Governor Rick Scott to be signed into law and he will likely sign it.  Governor Scott already signed one union-related bill approved by both chambers of the legislature recently.  After completion of the legislative process on the current bill, there will be three more public employee bills to be considered and passed in this 60 day legislative session that began on March 8, 2011. 

Governor Scott also has stated that he favors repeal of the Amendment in the Florida Constitution that provides collective bargaining rights for unions. Hopefully, we will be able to put into motion a Petition Initiative movement to accomplish that as soon as research is completed, followed by necessary planning, organization, and implementation. This will be a cooporative effort statewide to collect the required number of Petition Initiative signatures to get a proposed Amendment on the 2012 general election ballot to repeal the existing union-protecting Amendment in Florida's Constitution. 

Currently, union dues that are being collected by various levels of government, at a cost to the taxpayers, go out of Florida's economy and into unions' coffers, much of it to be spent for union-favored political candidates. It will continue to do so with the unions doing collective bargaining and their own collection of union dues. If collective bargaining were banned in the State of Florida, our economy would benefit, taxpayers would benefit by having to pay less taxes, more businesses could be attracted to do business in the state, state revenues would increase, and unemployment would go down.  And we would be less likely to have a budget shortfall like the one the state has now.  Governor Scott and our conservative State legislators are working hard to see to it that our state government is fiscally sound, our citizens are not over-taxed, and we dont have a union drain on our economy.  We need to help them in that effort by getting that existing Amendment repealed. For that purpose, we will need interested, motivated and dedicated volunteers. 

Below are a few excerpts from the news article, along with a link to the entire article:

"TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida House delivered a major blow to public employee unions Friday, approving a bill that would ban automatic dues deduction from a government paycheck and require members to sign off on the use of their dues for political purposes...'' The measure, HB 1021, passed by a 73-40 vote...

Democrats and labor unions have accused conservatives of "union-busting" and said the bill was more about political payback than public policy. Unions have typically been big backers of Democratic candidates...

Democrats argued that Republicans are simply trying to take out their political opponents. "It's about silencing the opposition. That's not democratic," said Rep. Richard Steinberg, D-Miami Beach.

During the last general election cycle, the statewide teachers' union gave more than $3.4 million in campaign contributions, mostly to Democrats. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees doled out nearly $1.4 million, much of it directly to the state Democratic Party. And the AFL-CIO and other labor groups gave hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

For the past few weeks, labor groups have been actively campaigning against the bill and testifying against it in legislative committee meetings, but the Republican majority was largely united in pushing the bill through the House.

The Senate version of the bill, sponsored by Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, has one more committee stop before it makes it to the floor.

Republicans have denied Democrats' accusations that the bill is a political attack, saying the legislation was designed to get government out of the political process since it would no longer be collecting dues for organizations that sometimes do political work..."

Link: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/fl-bill-bans-aut...

See earlier blogpost about union-related bill signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott mandating merit pay for teachers in Florida at:  J. R. Cottingham's blog

 

 

[J.R.]

What passed in this bill, that Gov. Rick Scott is sure to sign, is making the unions collect the dues themselves, instead of Florida taxpayers having to pay for local and state government entities to collect dues for the unions. It also requires unions to abide by decisions of members, evidenced by members' written signing off on allowing---or not allowing---the unions to use their union dues to fund policital candidates and support political causes that are against the members' own political interests. Historically, almost all union dues have been spent by the unions to elect Democrats and fund Democrat-supported issues.

Our Petition Initiative to repeal the existing Amendment in the Florida Constitution, if successful, will remove the protection of unions' right to collective bargaining in Florida and remove the unions' drain on Florida's economy and their adverse financial impact on Florida taxpayers who have to subsidize it. 

There are still several union-related public employee bills remaining in this legislative session. The one that interests me most is HB 1025 - Collective Bargaining. Since it's a House bill, the House of Representatives will consider and pass it first, then send it to the Senate for their approval.

The most recent public employee bill passed and signed into law was the "Student Success Act," SB 736, introduced by Sen. Wise, along with HB7019 by the K-20 Competitiveness Subcommittee. It was signed by Gov. Rick Scott, making it a Florida law that teachers' pay and tenure will now be based on merit and evaluations, not length of service or seniority. The unions did not want this law to pass. I made an earlier blogpost about the passage and signing of that bill that you can find in All Blogs or on my blog page.

You can also go to the www.KeepEmHonestFlorida.com and www.myfloridasenate.gov and www.myflorida.com/agency/35 for more information. The official website of Florida's State Legislature is http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Welcome/index.cfm?CFID=198434847&CFTOKEN=38420842

Another great source is

www.heritage.org which is The Heritage Foundation, for "Government Unions 101 - What Public-Sector Unions Won't Tell You," that is very informative and addresses a lot of questions about Collective Bargaining.

[JL Gawlik]

Apparently we were posting at the same time, thanks for those links.

[JL Gawlik]

I made a error in my below post, i meant to ask about a petition about the collective bargaining being ban not the union dues.

[JL Gawlik]

That was great news, funny i use to get irritated with so many seniors retiring to Florida over the years, moving down here and voting... many of them have principles and values that drove the generation below me to help build our country's greatness, well now that i am almost up there with them, i thank God that they are down here because many of them hold on to fiscal conservation and constitutional beliefs. And i hope pray that they all rise up and vote for the same in 2012. J.R. has a petition been put into motion yet on the union dues being taken out of pay checks?