Union leaders, advocates for organized labor, and official statistics all agree: Florida is not a bastion of powerful labor unions, unlike northern industrial states like Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania where unionized workforces are far more prevalent.
Still, support for labor unions in Florida is higher than some might expect, said Kevin Wagner, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University, an assessment based on results of a poll of Florida voters that asked about unions.
A majority said they support labor unions. Support is broad, cutting across many demographic groups — with one notable exception.
The support was recorded near the end of a year in which organized labor has received lots of attention for strikes — and contract settlements with significant pay increases or other concessions by employers — by auto workers and Hollywood actors and writers.
Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations told CNN this month that “this is the best run of wage increases won by labor since the period right after the end of World War II.”
The Florida poll doesn’t explain what motivates the choices people made: The news coverage of union victories? People feeling squeezed by wages that don’t seem to keep up with rising costs for food, property taxes and windstorm insurance? Something else?
“My guess is that you’ve seen some union success in the auto industry and of course in Hollywood, and I suspect a lot of people look at that and say … that might be able to raise my income as well,” Wagner said. “I do think that many Floridians are being squeezed by a number of costs including the high cost of living, housing, insurance, and the union victories suggest some avenues of improving their position.”
Dan Reynolds, president of the Florida AFL-CIO, said “a lot of it has to do with the growing realization that the middle class is fast disappearing.”
In Reynolds’ view, labor is on an upswing nationally. In Florida, he said, “organizing is tough, but there have been some successes.” (The AFL-CIO also faces some existential threats in Florida, largely on the political front.)
Reynolds, the longtime former president of the Broward AFL-CIO, had been secretary-treasurer of the Florida AFL-CIO and became acting president in June when his predecessor died. He was elected to a full term as president in September.
“I’m very optimistic,” Reynolds said. “There’s an organic nature to why people are in labor unions in spite of being up against forces that have all the money and all the megaphones. We’re still here because people realize that you need to have a voice.”
Maybe not. Bill Morrow is a union supporter, but he’s less sanguine than Reynolds.
“Florida is Florida, he said.
Morrow is the owner of Morrow Steel, based in Tampa Bay, and in business for 51 years as a unionized steel erector.
“We believe in the union and we believe in unions,” Morrow said, even though the vast majority of his company’s competition is non-union.
Though he’s now the company owner, he’s still a dues-paying member of the Iron Workers Union. “My father was a union ironworker and my son who works for me is a union ironworker.”
“As it relates to the progress of unions in Florida particularly and or the South, we’ve made very little gain or ground over the years,” Morrow said. “I’d like to say it’s improving. I just don’t see that.”
Union membership
Union membership data tend to support Morrow’s assessment.
Unionization nationwide is much higher nationally than in Florida, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In 2022, 4.5% of Florida’s 9.1 million workers were members of unions. In 2021, it was 5.2% of 8.7 million workers in the state.
National union membership was significantly higher — 10.1% in 2022, down from 10.3% in 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
The number of people belonging to unions increased nationally, but the large increase in the number of employed people translated into a lower percentage. In Florida, the number of union members decreased slightly as the total number of workers increased.
In addition to the union members, there are others, nationally and in Florida, who are represented by unions even though they aren’t members.
A representative for the Florida Chamber of Commerce didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the strength unions showed nationally in 2023 is reflected in Florida or whether the state is still a place in which workers haven’t wanted unions representing them and if there’s any change in union organizing in the state.
Morrow said compensation for his workers under the collective bargaining agreement is higher than what non-union competitors pay (largely because of benefits). “I make up a lot of that difference in productivity because of the skill level that we have.” He said a better trained, more motivated and productive work force helps the company compete.
Support in poll
A majority — 55% — of people in the FAU poll said they supported labor unions. That included 32% who strongly support and 23% who said they somewhat support labor unions.
Just 19% said they oppose labor unions, with 9% strongly opposed and 10% somewhat opposed. A significant share of Florida voters surveyed — 23% — said neither support nor oppose unions.
A different question, posted nationally by the Gallup poll in August, found 67% of the people surveyed said they approve of labor unions and 29% said they didn’t approve.
In the Florida poll, support was greater than 50% among men, women, all age groups, Democrats, independents, people who live in more urban areas, and those earning less than $200,000 a year.
Even among other groups — Republicans, people in more rural areas and those with incomes greater than $200,000 — there was significant support.
Wagner cautioned that support in the poll doesn’t indicate Florida voters are embracing unions.
But, he said, the “traditional perception of unions, especially among older Floridians and more conservative Floridians may not be held by other Floridians, especially younger ones, and that can have political consequences in the future.”
Among voters 65 and older, 54% said they strongly or somewhat support labor unions and 25% strongly or somewhat oppose them.
Among voters younger than 35, support was about the same at 56%. But opposition was dramatically lower — just 6%.
(Although the overall results of the poll, including everyone surveyed, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, the margin of error for subgroups based on age, political party, gender or other demographic characteristics is higher because the sample sizes are smaller.)
The poll, released last month, asked a range of of political and issue questions. It asked about unions because there was so much attention given to strikes and settlements this year, and it’s a question that hadn’t been polled in a long time, Wagner said.
Union challenges
Jack Fiorito, a professor at Florida State University’s College of Business, said via email that unionization in Florida is driven largely by public employee unions.
And that’s a major challenge for labor, Fiorito said. Republicans who have controlled the governor’s office and state Legislature for decades have enacted laws that he said “weaken public sector unions.”
Public employee unions have been a particular target.
This year, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature ended the automatic deduction of union dues from public employee paychecks — with the exception of police, firefighter and correctional officer unions. (The police, fire and corrections unions often support Republicans; teachers’ unions and other parts of the AFL-CIO generally support Democrats.)
The paycheck move “really hurt us badly,” the AFL-CIO’s Reynolds said.
Overnight, it knocked more than half the dues-paying members out of the state AFL-CIO, Reynolds said, forcing budget cuts and a diversion of time and resources to re-signing those members to pay their dues via credit card, debit card or bank bill pay.
One result, Reynolds said, is labor organizers had to curtail their organizing of new workplaces so they could work to re-sign members.
“It’s a blow to the labor movement because it strips away members. Yes, we will get back, but it takes a while,” he said. “We’re putting all our energy into just getting members back on the rolls that we had already. We could have been putting that energy into contract negotiations or new organizing.”
In successfully arguing against a union attempt to block the law from going into effect over the summer, Jason Gonzalez, an attorney for the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission, said requiring employees to pay dues in other ways would not cause unions to be “irreparably harmed.”
“The statute doesn’t say, ‘Hey, we are kicking all of these people off the rolls of the union membership,’” Gonzalez said. “They don’t lose a single member on the day this goes into effect.”
The law also requires unions to meet a new threshold of 60% of eligible employees being dues-paying members. If they fall below that level, they face having to go through recertification.
Fiorito said the 60% standard to retain representation rights “will be a tough standard for many public sector unions to achieve.” There’s a significant number of public employees who benefit from union representation but do not join and pay dues.
Poll breakdown
Do you support or oppose labor unions:
Men: strongly support, 29%; somewhat support, 24%; neither support nor oppose, 23%; somewhat oppose, 11%; strongly oppose, 11%.
Women: strongly support, 35%; somewhat support, 22%; neither support nor oppose, 23%; somewhat oppose, 9%; strongly oppose, 7%.
Democrats: strongly support, 56%; somewhat support, 26%; neither support nor oppose, 11%; somewhat oppose, 1%; strongly oppose, 3%.
Republicans: strongly support, 13%; somewhat support, 19%; neither support nor oppose, 32%; somewhat oppose, 18%; strongly oppose, 16%.
Independents: strongly support, 30%; somewhat support, 27%; neither support nor oppose, 22%; somewhat oppose, 8%; strongly oppose, 7%.
The poll was conducted Oct. 27 to Nov. 11, but unlike opinions about some current events or which candidate is up or down, Wagner said he thinks major shifts in the findings aren’t likely.
The survey was done by Mainstreet Research for Florida Atlantic University’s PolCom Lab, which is a collaboration of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies and Department of Political Science.
The survey used text messages to reach 946 Florida registered voters who responded to a link to complete the survey online.
This report includes information from the News Service of Florida.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Facebook, Threads.net and Post.news.