Why do lawmakers keep sticking it to working people? | Editorial
Politicians have been scrambling to rebrand themselves as populist friends of working people. But as always, voters should look at what politicians do — not what they say.
In Florida, the GOP has overwhelming supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature. They control the Governor’s Mansion and all three Cabinet seats. They can do whatever they want — and they do.
The 2023 session has been grotesque for many reasons, but when the dust clears, the session will be remembered for the ways lawmakers punished working people. Every chance they get, they stand with big corporations over little people. Here are three of the most glaring examples.
Stealing wages. A shameful stealth amendment that surfaced in the session’s next-to-last week would repeal local “living wage” ordinances in Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, Orlando and elsewhere. Living wage laws acknowledge that the cost of living is much higher in Orlando Fort Lauderdale or Miami than it is upstate. This assault on workers took hold in the House Commerce Committee where Republicans, including Broward’s Chip LaMarca, enthusiastically voted to stick it to their constituents. Waving his finger at witnesses who oppose the bill (HB 917), LaMarca chided them for never having signed the front of a paycheck.
Living wage ordinances apply to local government contracts for services, such as at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The Florida minimum wage is $11 an hour, the highest it has ever been, but still impossible to support a family of four. Orange County requires contractors to pay employees at least $15; that’s actually near the local norm for necessary jobs in food preparation, maintenance, security, landscaping and clerical work.
Repealing living wage laws will make it much harder to fill these jobs locally. Bob McKee of the Florida Association of Counties offered lawmakers some simple math. For a family of four, the federal poverty level is $30,000 a year. Divide that by 2,080 hours of work (that’s 52 40-hour weeks) and the wage is $14.42 is an hour.
“Hundreds of thousands of workers are going to be forced to take a pay cut,” Rich Templin of the Florida AFL-CIO told House members. “When you go home, you are going to have to explain why you voted to cut the wages of your constituents.”
Hurting tenants. You have to grudgingly give this cold-hearted crowd of lawmakers credit for persistence. A year ago, they failed to pass a bill that allowed landlords to charge nonrefundable monthly fees instead of a one-time, refundable security deposit. All you need to know about this issue (HB 133) is that one of the forces behind it is a California company, LeaseLock, that offers this service and can now lock in its profit model in a huge state where the housing affordability crisis is so severe that renting will be a reliable profit center, probably forever.
It gets worse. A separate bill (HB 1417) has dire long-term implications for tenants because it preempts all landlord-tenant regulation to the state. That’s driven by a Republican effort to repeal so-called “tenants’ bill of rights” ordinances in Democratic cities and counties ― again, with Orlando among them. Regrettably, eight House Democrats voted for this predatory measure. It’s one more case of the state punishing cities and counties. The worst possible group of people who should control the fate of renters is this Legislature.
Busting unions. The Republican majority resents public employee unions because they are well-organized, they vote, and they vote for Democrats. And they really don’t like Gov. Ron DeSantis. So lawmakers want to crush those unions, even in a right-to-work state where union membership is not compulsory. A bill headed to the governor’s desk with his support (SB 256) ends a decades-old practice of public sector employers automatically deducting union dues from members’ paychecks, with those employees’ approval. Public sector employers will continue to make automatic deductions for health and life insurance, charitable contributions or deposits to a credit union or 401(k) — everything but the union dues.
The bill requires workers to write monthly checks to their union. The proof that this legislation is nakedly partisan is that unions for police, firefighters and correctional officers that have supported Republicans are not affected. Under the bill, public employee unions also must conduct expensive audits and secure membership from 60% of eligible employees or apply for state certification. This is anti-union, anti-worker and un-American. It is so hostile to workers that in an era in which lawmakers rarely stray from the party line, five Republican senators refused to vote for it.
Welcome to Florida in 2023.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor in Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Insight Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com.
