In a rare win for the little guy in state politics, Florida lawmakers temporarily postponed and effectively killed a measure that sought to gut labor protections for nearly 1 million temporary workers in the state who do odd jobs in construction, janitorial services, and other industries with a low bar to entry.
The bill ( HB 6033 ), sponsored by Republican state Rep. Shane Abbott, sought to repeal Florida’s Labor Pool Act, a law approved in 1995 that established more than a dozen protections for temp workers that weren’t covered by any other state or federal law at the time. It set important standards for how staffing agencies could treat temp workers, including formerly incarcerated workers who often have more limited job prospects and have a harder time finding gainful employment upon re-entry. “It’s a vicious cycle,” Arthur Rosenberg, a lawyer for a Miami-area legal aid group, told the Tampa Tribune in 1995. “They’re [temp workers] exploited because they need jobs desperately. That’s what happens in sweat shops. When you’re at the bottom level, there’s no place else to go.”
Abbott, nonetheless, explained HB 6033 as an effort to repeal “duplicative” requirements that the Labor Pool Act enacted for staffing agencies, also known as “labor pools.” The law excludes farm labor contractors, union halls, temp centers that supply solely white-collar or “skilled” laborers, and employee leasing companies. “The fact of the matter is that these laws are duplicative of other federal and state laws,” Abbott claimed, during a hearing on the proposal last month. “The industry is already highly regulated, both federally and by other state wage and employer regulations.”…