Religious groups and unions in Florida are fighting a bill that would prohibit local governments from requiring sick pay benefits for workers. (Photo by Doug Geisler/Flickr.)
By Ashley Lopez
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
Religious groups and unions in Florida are fighting a bill that would prohibit local governments from mandating paid sick time for workers. Such a measure will be on the 2014 ballot in Orange County.
The bill also would stop local efforts to mandate a living wage and protect workers from wage theft.
For this legislative session, state Rep. Steve Precourt, R-Orlando, and state Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, have introduced a bill that would stop efforts in labor-friendly counties throughout the state to provide more benefits to workers.
Precourt’s and Simmons’ bills, if passed, will prohibit a “political subdivision” — which means “a county, municipality, department, commission, special district, board, or other public body” — from requiring “an employer to provide family or medical leave benefits to an employee and may not otherwise regulate such leave.”
The bill states that the prohibition is “for purposes of uniform application of this section throughout the state, with the exception of family or medical leave benefits regulated under federal law or regulations, the regulation of family and medical leave benefits is expressly preempted to the state.”
This reasoning is similar to that behind behind Simmons’ anti-wage theft bill, which would have outlawed an ordinance in Miami that prohibits employers from withholding earned wages from an employee. That bill died in the Florida Legislature after pressure from unions and others.
Now, the Orlando Sentinel reports that religious groups and unions are squaring off against the Florida Chamber of Commerce over this new bill.
PICO United Florida, announced its opposition to the bills, saying they would strip away existing and future local efforts to pass wage theft, living wage and sick pay benefit measures.
“On behalf of our 260 participating congregations representing numerous faiths and more than 90,000 Florida families, PICO United Florida is today calling on Florida lawmakers to drop efforts to block critical worker protections,” Peter Phillips, the executive director of PICO United Florida said in a statement. “An adequate wage is critical toward addressing systemic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for Florida’s families and guarantees the dignity of workers as urged in our faith scriptures.”
“This is big-government intrusion into local affairs and the Fraternal Order of Police opposes these Big Government attempts to undermine home rule,” said Steven Camacho, spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 86.
Big-business interests in Florida have opposed local laws that enforce sick time, a living wage and wage theft.
In Orlando last year, local lawmakers thwarted a citizen-led initiative to put paid sick time on the ballot. It was later found that the lawmakers were communicating with lobbyists representing companies opposed to the measure, which included Darden Restaurants and Walt Disney World, both based in Orlando.
According to Simmons and Precourt, those same companies worked with with them to draft their bills, which would curb any effort to pass those local laws in the future.