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USA Today
30-03-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Want to make less money? Florida GOP undermines voters with minimum wage scheme.
The minimum wage in Florida is under attack – and this time in a very dishonest way. After years of purposeful inaction by state lawmakers, Florida voters took matters into their own hands five years ago by passing a constitutional amendment that raised the minimum wage in the state. The voter initiative increased the then-paltry minimum wage of $8.65 per hour for nontipped workers, by putting it on a schedule of yearly increases that tops out at $15 an hour by Sept. 30, 2026. This year, the graduated minimum wage is $13 an hour in Florida. The constitutional amendment passed despite a well-funded opposition led by several business groups, including the Associated Builders and Contractors of Florida, the Associated Industries of Florida, the Florida Farm Bureau, the Florida Home Builders Association and the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association. And it didn't sit well with the Republican-led state legislature, either. GOP lawmakers apparently have decided to disregard the state's constitution and the will of the voters expressed through that referendum. It took them five years to find a new way to circumvent the voters' wishes. What they've come up with is a real doozy. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. A new Florida bill would let employers pay below minimum wage A bill (SB 676) working through the Florida Legislature this session rewrites labor laws in the state to allow workers to voluntarily request to get paid less than the minimum wage. Yes, I know. It sounds crazy. Who goes into a job asking to be underpaid? Or hopes to get a job that makes an instant pay cut sound like an exciting new opportunity? I guess the conversation will go something like this: 'Good news! You're hired. Now, just sign here on the line that says you have agreed to participate in our floor-sweeping apprenticeship opportunity at $7.25 an hour. 'If you do well there, you'll be eligible for a french fries work-based learning opportunity as soon as you complete your restroom internship.' Under this bill, reclassifying low-wage jobs as internships, apprenticeships or work-based learning opportunities would allow employers to sidestep the state's minimum wage law by hiring workers willing to sign away their absolute right to a minimum salary. The bill's sponsor in the Senate, Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, tried to make this Dickensian dystopia sound like a noble gesture by calling it 'trading pay for a marketable skill.' By Martin's reckoning, Florida is full of people who don't deserve to be paid a day's pay for a day's work. The bill doesn't define what a 'skill' is. There's also no definition in state law that defines an 'internship.' Tellingly, the bill purposefully allows the subminimum pay to apply to workers of all ages – not just teenagers. And it is being forwarded despite clear language in the Fair Labor Standards Act and Florida case law that employees can't waive their rights to minimum pay. We need fair wages. This is the opposite. In the end, this bill is just a legally flawed gift to businesses looking to cut labor costs at the expense of their poorest, unskilled workers. 'If we think that $13 an hour is what a bag boy at a grocery store should be making in rural Florida, then I think we have a misconception of either what's reasonable or we're not relating that to the cost of goods and services anymore,' Martin said. Reality check: A living wage in Florida for an adult with no children is $23.41 an hour, according to MIT's Living Wage Calculator. And there are about 1.5 million Floridians working in jobs that pay less than $15 per hour, according to data compiled by the Florida Policy Institute. The problem in Florida isn't that wages are too high and corporate profits are too low. This bill is a monumental step in the wrong direction. It lends a hand to those who need it least at the expense of those who are most in need. Here's how Jackson Oberlink, the legislative director for the social justice group Florida For All, put it. 'Let's be honest, no worker truly opts out of fair wages. There is zero protections in this bill against coercion, fraud, or employer intimidation, meaning bad actors can and will exploit it,' Oberlink told lawmakers at a committee meeting earlier this month. 'Under this bill," he added, "a fast-food worker, a grocery store cashier or a construction apprentice could suddenly find themselves reclassified as an intern and making far less than the legal minimum wage.' 'If this bill becomes law, it won't just hurt individual workers. It will drive down wages across entire industries as more and more businesses push workers into these bogus exemptions to cut costs,' Oberlink said. 'All we're asking for is fair pay for a hard day's work without loopholes, without carve-outs and without games,' he said. Is that too much to ask? We'll soon find out. Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, where this column originally published. He can be reached at fcerabino@
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Insurance still tops concerns for Floridians despite legislative changes, survey shows
Property insurance costs remain at the top of Floridians' concerns two years after changes were made to address an ongoing insurance crisis, according to a new survey. The state Legislature in December 2022 killed most of the incentive for policyholders to sue their insurers by enacting changes to the state's tort laws because the Republican majority of lawmakers believed the state's excessive litigation was the chief reason behind costs rising and insurance companies leaving the state. Since then, the number of lawsuits against insurers has dropped and new insurers have entered the market, made more risky by the state's vulnerability to hurricanes. Still, a poll from the Associated Industries of Florida's Center for Political Strategy shows the reforms have failed to dislodge the cost of property insurance from atop of a list of rising costs Sunshine State residents are concerned about. Thirty-three percent of Floridians surveyed ranked insurance costs as the most concerning among pocketbook issues, according to AIF's Q1 2025 Statewide General Election Poll. Meanwhile, 21% said the cost of food and groceries are the most alarming and 11% put mortgage and rent at the top of their list. Health care costs and auto insurance ranked as the fourth and fifth biggest concerns, but the number selecting those costs as most concerning did not break double digits among the 800 Floridian registered voters surveyed. Those surveyed qualify as likely to vote in the 2026 election. The polling, which came in at a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, was conducted from Feb. 10 to Feb. 13 by McLaughlin & Associates, a national research and strategic services company based in New York. Interviews were collected using landlines, cellphones and SMS/text messaging to the web, according to a news release from AIF. The concerns appear to be rising, even though state leaders have highlighted improving insurance industry conditions in speeches and news conferences. AIF's survey results in January 2024 showed 21% of those surveyed picked rising property insurance as the issue they were most concerned about — a statistical tie with worry about the rising overall cost of living. Other results of the survey released Feb. 26 found: A generic Republican candidate for the Florida Legislature outperforms a generic Democratic legislative candidate by 7 percentage points (48% to 41%). Republicans perform better than Democrats on who respondents believe are most effective in issues facing the state, with a whopping 47% saying that Republicans can handle the economy better compared with the 22% who said Democrats could do it better. On insurance costs, though, the biggest percentage of survey respondents (42%) chose the option that neither party is doing an effective job lowering property and home insurance costs. A majority approve of President Donald Trump's performance in the first weeks of his administration, with 53% saying they approve and 45% saying they 'strongly approve.' Anne Geggis is the insurance reporter at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at ageggis@ support our journalism. Subscribe today This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Rising insurance costs: Do Floridians feel they're getting relief?
