MIAMI SPRINGS, Florida. – On Monday, a Labor Day tribute to workers and those in the trenches was held at the United Teachers of Dade headquarters in Miami Springs.

And there has been strong backlash against a new state law that limits union membership and requires a member vote on the UTD’s existence for the first time in half a century. The Broward Teachers Union is in a similar bind.

“Our members know exactly what they have to lose and they will not allow us to lose that,” said union president Karla Hernandez-Mats.

The ballot was mailed to about 30,000 teachers and staff, giving them the choice of keeping UTD as their representative, not forming a union, or forming a new organization called the Miami Dade Education Coalition, a new union funded by the politically conservative Freedom Foundation group that helped draft the law making it difficult for unions to exist in Florida.

Brent Urbanik, president of the MDEC, said, “We feel like there are a lot of shell games going on in the district that UTD isn’t really pursuing.”

Local leaders recruited and funded by the Freedom Foundation say they want to keep politics out of the union, whose website outlines party-conservative plans.

When asked whether the Freedom Foundation would support MDEC with millions in this endeavor, Urbanik replied: “Nothing – for them it is just about aligning the same values ​​in this one agreement.”

Joy Jackson, a teacher at the Robert Renick Education Center in Opa-locka, is skeptical of the rival union’s motives.

“Why would anyone allow money to flow to them from an organization whose goal is to destroy unions?” she asked.

Recertification results are expected on September 24. Miami-Dade teachers have been working without contracts since Labor Day.