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Thirteen years ago, an unknown 31-year-old Special Needs science teacher at Hialeah Middle School answered the call from then United Teachers of Dade president Fedrick Ingram for rank-and-file members to become active.
Responding to the mass email, Karla Hernandez-Mats made a homemade sign calling for teacher pay raises and stood alone on Hialeah’s 49th Street. It was on that street corner that Ingram noticed the precocious middle school teacher whose smile and energy were infectious.
Ingram invited Hernandez-Mats to become more active in the union and within a year encouraged her to run for secretary/treasurer of UTD, the largest local in the state of Florida. Three short years later Hernandez-Mats successfully ran for and was elected as the first Latina president of United Teachers of Dade. Hernandez-Mats has been re-elected two consecutive times and has consistently earned 80 percent voting member support.
The proud daughter of Honduran immigrants, Hernandez-Mats’ father is a former farm worker who went from working the fields to becoming a union carpenter. She credits her parents for teaching her about the importance of organized labor, unions and education.
Now, after nine years as president, Hernandez-Mats is looking to begin a new chapter in her professional career on her own terms and on the heels of several recent victories for the union.
“It has been the honor of my lifetime to serve as the president of UTD. After the recent 83 percent landslide victory for recertification, I realized that UTDm the teacher’s unionm has never been stronger and that the time to begin anew is now,” Hernandez-Mats declared.
The most impressive part of this year’s victories was that there was a coordinated effort by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Legislature and a billionaire-funded out-of-state anti-worker organization to decertify UTD. The coordinated effort spent more than $2 million during the course of 12 months — and failed spectacularly. MDEC, the group challenging UTD, garnered just 13 percent of the vote to UTD’s 83 percent.
Among the many honors that UTD president Karla Hernandez-Mats has received are 2010 Hialeah Middle School Teacher of The Year, Cesar Chavez Action & Commitment – Florida Education Association, Women of Labor Award – AFL CIO Diario De Las Americas – Women of Power, and the South Florida Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Leadership in Education Award.
President Karla Hernandez-Mats term runs through May and she has endorsed UTD’s first vice president Antonio “Tony” White to succeed her. White’s running mates will be the current secretary/treasurer, Mindy Grimes-Festge, and Miami Northwestern Senior High School ESOL teacher, Dannielle Boyer, as first vice president.
UTD milestone accomplishments under President Hernandez-Mats:
• Highest membership percentage (58.6 percent) in over 20 years.
• 2022, Teacher and Staff Pay Raise Referendum Renewal.
• 2020, purchased new UTD headquarters debt free.
• 2018, Teacher & Staff Pay Raise Referendu.
• 2014, UTD became debt free for the first time in decades.
• Under Hernandez-Mats’ leadership, UTD has led relief missions in-person to both the Bahamas and Haiti.
Consider the results:
• Florida average teacher pay $53,000; Miami-Dade average teacher pay $75,000.
• Average teacher pay increase since 2018 — $17,779 (31 percent).
• Average increase in healthcare premiums nationwide since 2018 is 22 percent; UTD bargaining unit has had zero increases to healthcare premiums since 2018.
• UTD and its members have helped more than 700 colleagues apply and receive over $110 million in student loan forgiveness.
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