Editorial: For Florida's working poor, a very rare victory in Tallahassee

Yahoo

19-04-2025

The moral of this editorial is simple: Never stop fighting for what you believe in, especially in Tallahassee. Despite the odds, keep speaking up.
A rare and surprising thing happened at the state Capitol on Thursday, as a Senate committee suddenly shelved a bill that could do serious harm to the people near the bottom of the economic ladder in Florida.
They are day laborers who struggle to find work through labor pools and temporary employment agencies, showing up as early as 3 a.m. to seek low-wage work such as removing construction debris in hopes of earning $70 or $80 a day.
Florida workers have been abused by the Legislature for too long. It has continued this session, in which lawmakers want to allow employers to avoid paying the $13-an-hour minimum wage, make it easier to exploit young teens in the workplace and make it harder for jobless people to seek relief when Florida already has the nation's stingiest unemployment benefits.
It appears as if the prolonged political assault on the working poor in this state has finally gone too far — even for otherwise anti-worker Republicans.
At issue in that Thursday committee hearing was Senate Bill 1672, which would repeal Florida's Labor Pool Act, a law with bare-bones legal safeguards for those who rely on day labor to make ends meet.
A Senate staff report said the 1995 law 'provides for the health, safety and well-being of day laborers throughout the state and outlines uniform standards of conduct and practice for labor pools.'
For example, the law requires employers to meet minimum work standards such as safety helmets, to provide drinking water and restrooms at job sites, and seating for workers who may wait for hours to be hired.
The law also requires employers to give day laborers itemized pay stubs and bars employers from charging exorbitant fees to transport workers.
Sen. Keith Truenow, a first-term Republican from suburban Orlando, filed the repeal bill. For the second time this session, he gave a disingenuously vague explanation of it to the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee on Thursday.
'The bill seeks to remove provisions of Florida law that are duplicative,' Truenow told senators in a flat monotone.
Somebody was paying attention, and attentive senators are all too familiar with such political shenanigans.
But only when opponents spoke up did the true effects of the bill begin to emerge.
Republican Sen. Blaise Ingoglia of Spring Hill, who has a decidedly pro-business voting record and a history of opposing labor unions, asked that SB 1672 be postponed — a sign of big trouble with only two weeks left in the regular session.
'I think all of us have some questions,' Ingoglia said.
The bill was set aside with no vote, or temporarily postponed in the jargon of the Legislature. The Fiscal Policy Committee may not meet again this session, which would make that temporary postponement permanent — unless the bill is filed again next year. The House version, HB 6033, has passed two House committees.
A leading opponent of the bill, lawyer Maya Ragsdale of Hallandale Beach, is a co-director of Beyond the Bars, a worker center in Miami that helps released inmates find work.
'If repealed, most protections in the Labor Pool Act would be lost entirely,' Ragsdale testified. She told senators they are getting 'incomplete and inaccurate information' about the impact of its repeal, and that it is wrong that similar federal protections also exist.
Ragsdale and other critics say the force behind the law's repeal is a Houston-based company, Pacesetter Personnel Services, which has a big presence in South Florida.
The firm retained lawyer-lobbyist Ron Book and two associates of his Hollywood firm. Campaign finance records show that Book's firm gave $5,000 to Truenow's political committee, Growing Florida's Leadership, and the lobbyist contributed $3,000 more to Truenow's campaign last year.
Besides Beyond the Bars, the Florida AFL-CIO is fighting the bill.
The union's chief lobbyist, Rich Templin, railed against the Legislature's anti-worker agenda in a news conference Wednesday with Sen. Tina Polsky, a Democrat from Boca Raton, and Beyond the Bars members.
The 2025 session is far from over and the repeal could be fished out of the discard pile and passed through a waiver of the rules. But for once, the collective voices of Florida's working poor were heeded.
They spoke up — and it mattered.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to [e-mail].