Florida Congressman Neal Dunn stops by TV20 Studio to discuss daylight savings, unions

Published: Oct. 3, 2019 at 6:51 PM EDT
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DS: You've...uh...also filed a resolution to ban unions from demanding money or offering money to Veterans Affairs employees?

DUNN: From basically bribing new employees as they're brought in; "Take $100 cash to join a union," and they don't tell them at that point how hard it is to get out of the union because there's narrow windows of time where you can do it and things like that.

DS: Well, why not let the employees decide?

DUNN: Well, I like..uh..choice, I do like that. But I think we should also continue to be informed; so what we're getting is $100 in cash and not much information and the information comes later. And you go "Oh, that was a trick." That's how they feel and it's very difficult to...once you're in the union, you only have 10 days each year to get out and you have to go through a large process to do that as well. So they make a fairly high...obstacles to getting out. If you give a choice where they can quit anytime or join anytime? All for that, all for that.

DS: Let's...this is going to be a different question now. It's not a "gotcha" question, but the question has to do with the Florida Legislature in 2018 passing a resolution asking Congress to...uh...make Daylight Savings Time...or Saving Time...permanent in the State of Florida. Now, Congress has to approve that.

DUNN: That's true.

DS: And so far, they have not done it. What will it take to make it so that...we're ending Daylight Saving Time in a few weeks, so what will it take for Congress to act on this?

DUNN: I would want to...uh...be convinced that there's really a lot of gain to that. You know, we thought that there was going to be savings in electricity when we started doing this stuff...but it actually didn't look like it saved a lot of electricity. The other thing to remember is that the Panhandle in Florida has some Central daylight...some Central Time Zone, right? In fact, I live in the Central Time Zone and...uh...it's actually a risk to our children to have that whole time slid forward and they're standing out at the bus stop in the morning in the pitch black. And so our Superintendent of Schools in all of our counties over in the Central Time Zone...they're all opposed to this. They hate it, and so it's a...uh...mixed bag for the people in the Central Time Zone. It's just that when you get that far west, you know, the sun really does come up later.

DS: On a...uh...much "lighter" note, to try and offer that...

DUNN: Haha! Good pun!

DS: You announced that students in the second district will be eligible to participate in the Congressional App Challenge.

DUNN: Ah, that's fun.

DS: Can you tell me what that is and what that would do for the students?

DUNN: Yeah, each year we challenge the middle schoolers and high schoolers to come up with apps that..uh...for their phone that are useful and helpful and...uh...what we're trying to do is incentivize the technology, you know? The development of these kinds of things. And the kids come up with some great stuff...uh...just amazing applications. And it's going to get better now that we're going to the 5G technology, which just got turned on last week in Panama City. So we have 5G Mobile…."on your phone" 5G technology...and it should cause an explosion of terrific apps that...uh...we'll see all kinds of things we never thought we'd see.

DS: Alright. Thank you, Congressman Neal Dunn, in what could be a momentous time for joining us. We appreciate your presence here.

DUNN: Appreciate you. Thank you very much.