A bill in the Florida Legislature
meant to stop working Floridians from securing higher pay or better benefits was given to lawmakers by a big-business lobbying group that represents major employers like Publix Super Markets, Bank of America and Walt Disney World, according to emails obtained in a public-records request.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce may not be working alone. The emails suggest
the business group had help writing the wages-and-benefits bill from a billionaire-backed think tank called the Foundation for Government Accountability — the same organization that wrote a separate proposal moving through Tallahassee this session that would weaken Florida’s child-labor laws.
The wages-and-benefits bill is House Bill 433. It began as an attempt to stop cities and counties across Florida from passing heat-protection ordinances — local laws that would require employers to provide safety measures like cool drinking water and periodic breaks to roofers, farmworkers and other employees who work outdoors in extreme heat.
But a few weeks after the bill was filed, the Republican-controlled Florida House of Representatives dramatically expanded the scope of the legislation.
In addition to stopping local heat-protection laws, the new version of the bill would also erase “living wage” ordinances that have been adopted in many of Florida’s big cities and urban counties. Those ordinances typically require companies that receive local government contracts to pay their employees a few dollars more than the statewide minimum wage, which is currently $12 an hour.
That’s not all. The revamped legislation would also block cities and counties from doing anything else that might affect the “terms and conditions” of employment at any private employer. It’s a sweeping prohibition that appears partly aimed at stopping the spread of “
Fair Work Week” laws, which are meant to ensure more predictable schedules for hourly workers.
Records show this rewrite came from the Florida Chamber. Carolyn Johnson, a lobbyist for the chamber, emailed the proposed legislation to Rep. Tiffany Esposito, a Republican from Fort Myers who is sponsoring HB 433.