Collective Bargaining Rights Affirmed in Florida
By Gwendolyn Bradley
A state appellate court ruled in February that the state of Florida was wrong when it discontinued its dealings with faculty and employee unions at its public universities in 2001. In that year, the Florida legislature dissolved a statewide board of regents that had overseen the public university system and restructured its governance system, in the process discarding union contracts negotiated under the old system. The state argued that the new system was in essence a different employer and was therefore not bound by agreements made with the old employer.
As a result, unions were told they had lost their status as bargaining representatives and that they had to seek to be recognized all over again and negotiate new contracts with each of eleven public institutions separately to replace the single contract that had previously applied to all. Faculty and employee unions filed unfair-labor-practice complaints with the state's Public Employees Relations Commission, but the complaints were dismissed.
The appellate court's decision, which found that the new administrative structure was bound by the collective bargaining agreements inherited from the former structure, overturns the complaint's dismissal and sends the matter back to the employee-relations commission for further consideration. In light of the Florida constitution's provision that the right of employees to bargain collectively shall not be abridged, the court wrote that "state government cannot . . . unilaterally terminate its obligations uder a collective bargaining agreement simply by reorganizing the Executive Branch, where the employees affected perform the same work, in the same jobs, under the same supervisors, by operating the same facilities, carrying on the same enterprise, providing the same service."
"The court's decision proved once again that faculty who unite to improve their collective status and individual rights can prevail even against a state government that wishes them ill. I hope it will deter other governors from trying the same devious tricks," says Roy Weatherford, president of the University of South Florida chapter of the faculty union.
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