The United Teachers of Dade narrowly missed a new state-mandated voter turnout threshold by half a percentage point in its latest election, drawing 49.5% participation from its bargaining unit — though the state's largest teachers union will avoid dissolution because state officials confirmed the election was "not subject to the new law."
Despite falling just 184 votes short of the 50% requirement during a mail-in ballot process that ran mostly over the summer break, 97% of those who voted cast ballots in favor of the union.
UTD President Tony White noted that while "a lot of the education professionals kind of check out during this time," the record turnout of over 11,000 voters served as a vital "stress test to see if we could make enough changes internally to move enough people to vote."
The total number of votes was 11,356, with 97% being in favor of the union. There are 23,079 people in the union’s bargaining unit; they needed just 184 more votes to meet the state law threshold.
The union said in a statement that the commission confirmed this election is not subject to the new state law, since it went into effect after the election process had already begun.
The new law, which took effect July 1, mandates at least 50% of the members of a union or prospective bargaining unit must participate in a vote to certify or recertify a union, and 50% of them must approve for the union to remain intact.
The original bill, SB 1296, was passed by the Legislature earlier this year. In signing the bill into law in May, Gov. Ron DeSantis said it would “provide once and for all for the decertification of partisan teacher unions.”
Even though this particular election wasn't a threat to the union's existence, it signaled how vulnerable the union is under the new law.
"This gave us the opportunity to do what we call a stress test to see if we could make enough changes internally to move enough people to vote in the process, to participate," White said.
READ MORE: DeSantis wants teachers' unions gone. United Teachers of Dade says it is here to stay
If the union was decertified, it would mean a total dissolution of the current contract that sets pay, workplace conditions and benefits for more than 23,000 employees.
The UTD has a storied history in Florida labor, becoming the first public sector labor union to be registered with the state in 1975.
Miami-Dade County’ Public Schools earned an A rating from the state for the 2025-26 school year, its seventh since 2018. Statewide, 76% of Florida’s traditional public schools earned an A or B rating, up from 71% last year.
"That is because of the amazing work our educators and school personnel do every day to ensure our students receive the best education," a union spokesperson said in a statement.
Targeting public sector unions
In the last decade, Florida has twice targeted public sector unions across the state with new laws, pushing to make it more difficult for those unions — especially teachers’ unions — to survive.
In 2023, the Legislature passed SB 256, which required at least 60% of public sector union members pay dues to stay active. Since then, 3,215 government employees have decertified their unions, according to the Freedom Foundation, a think tank "battering the entrenched power of left-wing government union bosses who represent a permanent lobby for bigger government, higher taxes, and radical social agendas," according to its website. It urged lawmakers to pass the latest anti-union law.
The foundation's CEO, Aaron Withe, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal after DeSantis signed the law. He wrote this issue "should never have been controversial: If a union claims the right to speak for every worker in a bargaining unit, it should be supported by a majority of its members."
Withe argued that it's unfair for hundreds of employees' work to be bargained and decided by a group that doesn't have an electoral backbone. "Win majority support from the people you claim to represent or don’t presume to represent them," he wrote.
The right to join unions is protected by Florida law.
WLRN has previously reported that tens of thousands of public employees lost their union representation after the 2023 law went into effect.
Lawmakers are "creating a system of chaos right now" in public education, White said.
" United Teachers Date is a non-partisan organization, which the state continues to try to paint us as being partisan," White said. "We're only partisan to good education policy, and right now we're not getting that out of our state legislatures or the governor, and it's time that we join ranks with some of our community allies to let them know that this isn't fair and this isn't right."
