Wednesday, April 10, 2013

GOP-led Florida House Passes ALEC-Linked Anti-Sick Leave, Anti-Living Wage Bill



Apr 5th 2013
By Ashley Lopez
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

The GOP-led Florida House of Representatives passed a bill last night that would prohibit local governments in the state from implementing laws that extend paid sick leave benefits to workers. The bill is similar to others backed by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

ALEC and Florida’s anti-sick leave bill have a considerable amount of corporate support.

Florida’s House Bill 655, which passed 75-43 Thursday, would also invalidate any move by local governments to mandate living wages for workers.

Currently, activists in Orange County have been working to place a measure on a ballot that would allow residents to vote on whether they want a county-wide ordinance requiring earned sick pay. They were able to collect the thousands of signatures needed to get on on the ballot last year, but county commissioners intentionally stalled to prevent a sick pay measure from getting on the November 2012 ballot.

It was later discovered that some of the commissioners who kept the measure off the ballot were communicating with lobbyists representing companies opposed to the measure, including Darden Restaurants and the Walt Disney World. Eventually, a judge ordered the county to put the measure on next year’s ballot.

However, if HB 655 passes in the Senate as well, the result of that vote would be moot.

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Anti-labor bills like this one aren’t just being passed in the Sunshine State. According to The Huffington Post, many states are considering or have already passed laws that would restrict local efforts to extend benefits to workers when companies refuse to do so.

A HuffPo post by Mary Bottari of Center for Media and Democracy reported:

Corporate-backed bills have passed at the state level in Wisconsin, Louisiana, and Mississippi that would preempt (or as one GOP operative put it, “deliver the kill shot” to) local paid sick leave laws. Similar bills are on the legislative docket in Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Washington. This paid sick leave preemption effort can be traced back to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) …

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