Republicans have pushed back against the United Teachers of Dade teachers’ union. The rivalry grew even more tense amid the COVID-19 pandemic. One conservative group, the Freedom Foundation, is now pushing back against the teacher's union, hoping to take down the union.
The organization has launched a campaign that distributes mail pieces that are critical of the teacher’s union, and Florida state Senator Shevrin Jones (D) has denounced the campaign.
Jones took to social media to comment on the pieces that have been distributed, calling them an part of an attempted “power grab” from Republicans.
According to a report from CBS News, Freedom Foundation is a conservative think tank that is largely backed by “wealthy conservative donors who have raised tens of millions of dollars over the years for what they say is a non-partisan effort to educate workers about their rights, but that critics charge is a well-orchestrated national campaign to weaken and destroy labor unions representing government employees.”
In recent months, the mail pieces have been heavily critical of their union, calling on teachers to “stop paying their union dues to the United Teachers of Dade.” The United Teachers of Dade is Florida’s largest teachers’ union, representing 30,000 school district employees.
Some of the prominent conservative donors that back Freedom Foundation include the Charles Koch Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and the State Policy Network.
Rusty Brown, the Southern Director for the Freedom Foundation, who is also running the anti-union campaign from Texas, called the effort “a very expensive campaign.”
“It’s obviously not small. I mean, you can do the math on what mailings cost; they’re not cheap. But like I said, that’s not something I’ll shy away from. You know, this is going to be a very expensive campaign,” Brown said.
When asked if Freedom Foundation was ready to spend millions of dollars to rid the state of the teacher’s union, Brown responded that they were willing to do “whatever it takes.”
In response to the campaign, Jones argued that the “report highlights something that we’ve known for a long time – the Governor and Republicans want to dismantle unions at the expense of teachers and schools.”
Warning that the anti-union sentiment has already “infiltrated our state,” Jones further commented that “Florida showed its hand already last session by passing bills that attack our constitutional right to unionize.”
Jones went on to call the effort “none other than a power grab from right wing elected officials who are too busy going after woke instead of making our system work.”
