Under Florida’s Amendment 2 , a ballot measure approved by 61% of voters in 2020, Florida’s minimum wage is set to hit $15 an hour for non-tipped workers by Sept. 30, 2026, and $11.98 an hour for workers who earn tips. Today, the minimum wage is $13 an hour in Florida—a figure that falls far short of what experts estimate to be a “living wage” in the Sunshine State, what it takes to afford housing and food. Ahead of the 2020 election, Florida’s minimum wage was just $8.56 an hour.
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Worker advocates have celebrated the pay increase, meant to help everyday working Floridians afford Florida’s higher cost of living. But some businesses have made controversial adjustments to their pay practices, including the addition of questionable service charges, in order to unload their own labor costs onto customers.
Samantha Padgett, a lobbyist for the politically influential Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, admitted to state representatives during a Florida House committee meeting on Wednesday, March 19 that “many” of her group’s 10,000 members in the hospitality industry have switched to what’s known as a commission-style pay system, where new service charges now serve as the “basis of [servers’] pay.”
“Following the passage of Amendment 2 and the increase of the minimum wage, this hit the restaurant industry especially hard, and following that, many of our members in the restaurant industry have moved to a commission-based pay model,” Padgett told lawmakers, in response to a Republican legislator’s voiced complaints about service charges that have shown up on her own bills at restaurants…