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