Florida Labor Letter – Budgets, Beaks, and More (Week of 2/20)

Daniel Diaz |

Welcome to another edition of the Florida AFL-CIO’s weekly Florida Labor Letter for the week of 2/20. With the conclusion of Week 6, we reach the end of the beginning of the second half of the regular session. Was that a bit confusing to read? Yes! And so has been this week, as an out of sync House and Senate continue to move bills out of chamber with little promise or knowledge if they will be taken up by the other side, and both debut budgets with a $1.4 billion dollar gap to make up between them. Let’s get into what that means for the working families and what your WFLC got up to this week below!

🏛️Legislative Session: Week of 2/20

As mentioned in last week’s Labor Letter, the 2026 General Appropriations Act (referred to as “the GAA” or “The Budget“) has begun to take the spotlight in the Florida Legislature this week, putting legislators across the chambers into fierce negotiations as they evaluate what policy issues this session are really worth reaching the finish line and which should fall to the side. In these disagreements lie the opportunity for working families (and special interests) to make their final case to legislators on the real importance of the issues, and in case it wasn’t clear last week, the House Speaker reminded us this week that there is plenty of disagreement to go around, opening this Thursday’s session with the remarks that “What happens in the days ahead will decide if we will be here another three weeks or another three months.” With that comforting note, let’s get into some of how this played out with regards to the issues this week.

  • The House Passes its Nail in the Coffin in Florida’s Unemployment Insurance System (HB 191)
    • We are well familiar with the progress made by this unfriendly bill’s Senate counterpart (SB 216), as well as the great progress made by working families in prior weeks to convince members of the Senate majority of its dangerous harms on those most struggling part in Florida’s workforce.
    • The Florida House pre-empted these efforts, taking up this disastrous bill in last year’s pre-session committee meetings before Working Families and others even got to Tallahassee. This week, they finally took it up on the floor, passing it quickly along party lines despite concer
      • What’s Next: Working families have put great effort towards advocating against this bill in committee stops in the Senate this session, and even reinforced that effort with a letter drop off campaign to all Senators last week. Though it has not appeared on the Senate floor agenda yet, we are doing everything to keep it that way, emphasizing that this bad bill does nothing to reduce fraud, and does everything to ensure that what is already rated as the worst Unemployment Insurance System in the nation stays that way.
  • The Senate Temporarily Postpones Attacks on “Ideologies Inconsistent with American Values (SB 1632)
    • Working Families gained good ground against this unfriendly and anti-free speech bill this week just by showing up. In the Senate Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice, Committee Chair Ileana Garcia Temporarily postponed hearing SB 1632 at all this week, citing the sheer volume of public comment and inability to hear the bill fully without running out of time allotted to the committee. The effort of the public in showing their concern was well received by the committee regardless, with Senator Garcia reading all of the public comment cards into the record upon the suggestion of Senator Smith, who spoke for us all when he said “I’m all for TPing Senate Bill 1632”
      • What’s Next: Senator Garcia postponed the bill with a verbal commitment to ensuring that it gets heard next week (Week 7), though as evidenced by the committee’s execution this week and the decreasing time remaining in regular session, this bill and it’s ability to allow an un-elected bureaucrat to identify unions as “terrorist organizations” is in peril as we get closer to the end of session.
  • The House Passes their worst Property Tax Bill, and the Senate is not enthused (HJR 203)
    • Arguably the top story in Florida’s political class this week is the passage of HJR 203, the final decision from the House’s year long exploration of seven different ways to remove property taxes and endanger Florida’s local public services. This unfriendly and by far most costly amendment would see the now near immediate elimination of all non-school property taxes, decimating the budgets of many of Florida’s most fiscally constrained counties and mandating they still somehow match public safety budgets made before those cuts. The proposed loss in revenues statewide totals an estimated $13.3 billion dollars.
    • We could go on about the extreme dangers this poses to public services like after school care, transportation, infrastructure, and more, but the Florida Senate and Governor were ahead of us this week, expressing doubt about hearing the bill any further while instead endorsing a still yet to be announced property tax initiative of their own out of the senate.
      • What’s Next: Who knows! The political machinations and discussion on Property Taxes have been at the forefront of Florida Politics for over a year, and even now still finds itself with startlingly little consensus among each of the three branches. But Working Families should enjoy a brief victory in the knowledge that through their concerted efforts and testimony in the committees leading up to now, they have ensured that the bill with the most monstrous appetite for cutting more and more essential public services and jobs has not grown outside of the House Floor.
  • The Florida “SAVE” Act Continues its Attack on the Right to Vote (SB 1334 & HB 991)
    • Modeled after and similarly to the nefarious federal legislation that is currently working its way through Washington, this deeply unfriendly Florida-specific version of the bill requires ALL Florida voters to re-verify their citizenship status to continue to be able to vote while simultaneously raising the standards and burden of proof of doing so on the part of voters. One example is the new requirement that voters must have ready access and presentation of a passport or original birth certificate— even if you’ve been voting for years as an eligible voter and proven citizen.
    • This week, this voter suppression legislation muscled its way through its second committee stop in the Senate and final committee stop in the House, passing on party lines despite the rigorous and overwhelming public comments from working families, voting rights groups, and concerned citizens that highlighted the various issues with the bill such as its unfunded mandate on local supervisors of elections, costs and barriers to accessing proof-of-citizenship documents, and the fact that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in Florida, with harsh existing penalties.
      • What’s Next: The bill awaits a final Floor vote in the House and one more committee stop in the Florida Senate. Though no major commitments have been made by chamber leadership on its unified passage, this is still a top priority for your Working Families Lobby Corps in the coming weeks. Make no mistake: This bill is about making voting harder for Floridians so that our officials are not held accountable. We will not let them forget that.

🍊Florida Labor News

FEA Addresses Misinformation by Department of Education

Photo Courtesy: WFLX

This week, our teachers were the subject of a fierce misinformation campaign at the hands of twitter warriors and the Florida Department of Education, a sentence we didn’t think we would have to type this year. After a clip of an FEA Press Conference that highlighted the real problems facing Florida Teachers was cut out of context and went viral on twitter, the Florida Commissioner of Education took the opportunity to ignore any good faith critiques and instead amplify a narrative that Florida’s teacher’s unions were endorsing ICE Walkouts across the nation, which was further weaponized by the Governor and legislators to justify the blatantly unconstitutional public sector union busting bills SB 1296/HB 995 (which has nothing to do with walkouts at all.)

Our teachers did not take the attack lightly, and used the opportunity this week to host a media availability to clarify against the misinformation campaign and poor attempt to pivot from the reality that this is misinformation stirred up against teachers in order to distract from the fact that SB 1296 is nothing but an unconstitutional attack on the freedoms and rights of ALL of our public workers.

Defending Florida’s teachers, President Spar said, per Florida Politics:

“Spar said teachers will not encourage such demonstrations. Moreover, he stressed that Florida educators represent a range of political views.

“For the past several years, at the direction of our more than 120,000 members, the FEA has worked with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to strengthen Florida’s public schools,” Spar said in the more recent press conference.”

Broward County Teachers Union Protest Cuts To Weight-Loss Medication Coverage by School District

Meanwhile, in South Florida, our educators are waging a different battle. Per The South Florida Sun Sentinel:

“The Broward school district will no longer cover popular weight-loss medications on its insurance plans, leading to complaints that the district is putting its financial health ahead of employees’ health.

The School Board recently decided to stop covering GLP-1 medications, such as Wegovy and Zepbound, for employees using them for weight loss. The drugs will still be covered for diabetes use, district officials say.”

“Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, described the board action as “backdoor garbage” during Wednesday’s committee meeting. The union filed a grievance on Tuesday, alleging violations to a collective bargaining agreement.

“We have people that say, ‘I go to my medical doctor, and it’s saving my life,’” Fusco said at the insurance committee meeting. “I want the medicines back. And I want the Broward County Public Schools to figure out a … way to save money other than on the backs of their employees.”

✊Solidarity Spotlight

Nurses protest ICE in Largo

Credit: Dave Decker/Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

Coming out of Central Florida this week, members of National Nurses United joined their siblings nationwide this week in protesting ICE and advocating for Congress to stop funding ICE, as well as advocate for hospitals to better protect patients and their information from ICE

Per Creative Loafing in Tampa Bay

“A lot of hospitals … they’re either encouraging or just not creating policies to protect their patients that are in the hospitals.” Chief Nurse Representative, Keosha Morris told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.

“We have HIPPA that protects patients from being known about their whereabouts and confidentiality, but it seems like all of that is going out of the window in certain areas just to aid ICE’s agenda to lock up people who are essentially seeking help or even are citizens just ’cause they look a certain way.”

🗓️On the Horizon

  • Statewide
  • North Florida
    • Saturday, February 21, 8AM-4PM
      • This Saturday, February 21, 2026, The Leon County Teachers Association will be a vendor at the National MagLab Open House at the Shaw Building (2031 E. Paul Dirac Drive) from 8AM-4PM. During this time, they will be hosting a Book Giveaway to support students and families in the community and highlight STEM Programs in Leon County ahead of School Choice deadlines.
  • South Florida
    • Saturday, February 28 – 6:30 PM, “Black in the Day in Miami” Event
      • Joseph Caleb Community Center, 5400 NW 22nd Ave., Miami, FL 33142
      • United Teachers of Dade, Florida Rising, South Florida AFL-CIO, and APRI are hosting a powerful evening reflecting on the history of Black union power in Miami-Dade County.
      • 🔗 RSVP HERE

🛠️Business Board

📸Bonus Bulletin

This week’s Bonus Bulletin features photos of much needed downtime in the middle of the week’s legislative business, with members from week 6 pictured above after taking part in our Solidarity in the Sunshine Photo Shoot and Penguins from the Florida Aquarium that waddled their way around the capitol to lobby legislators for budget funding allocations for storm restoration, reef restoration research, and likely some more sardines 🐧.

That concludes this week’s roundup! Thank you for reading and as always, In Solidarity!

Got any tips, actions, or messages you’d like to see in this email?

Please email Daniel Diaz at ddiaz@flaflcio.org

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