A year since Floridians approved Amendment 2 to gradually raise the state’s minimum wage to $15, a Republican lawmaker is again looking for a way to pay workers less.
State Sen. Jeff Brandes of Pinellas County refiled a joint resolution that would authorize the Legislature to establish a subminimum wage potentially as low as $4.25 an hour that employers could pay to new hires during their first six months.
First, lawmakers would need to pass the resolution to place it on the 2022 ballot; then, it would need 60% approval from voters.
Brandes calls the measure a “training wage.”
“The goal is to get an employer to offer a job to an employee they otherwise would not consider because of experience or other risks factors that make them a riskier hire,” Brandes said. “The goal here is to get people trained and then moved up to the minimum wage and beyond.”
But worker advocates argue it’s merely a way to undermine Amendment 2, which after receiving 60% of the vote will annually raise the minimum wage by $1 until it hits $15 in 2026. The minimum wage in Florida now is $10 an hour.
“This is just a loophole,” said Tsedeye Gebreselassie, director of work quality for the National Employment Law Project. “The scope of this proposal would allow a training wage for, it sounds like, any job where you have a new employee. From my reading of it, there’s no detail on what are the jobs, what are the industries where you might need a training wage; what are the skills you are asking workers to...
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