Hi Friends,
While the legislature continues to waste our hard-earned tax payer money with every additional day they have to convene in Tallahassee, we want to take a moment to reflect on some of the things that actually went right this session.
One of our biggest victories this year was the defeat of a an entire slate of anti-labor bills. These bills were designed to strip away basic protections for workers, even targeting kids and the unemployed. They were pushed by powerful corporate interests, dark-money think tanks, and lawmakers who clearly hate the idea of Floridians having any freedoms or dignity.
Every single one of these bills died. Not because legislators suddenly found their conscience, but because grassroots advocates and working Floridians showed up and made our voices impossible to ignore!
In this series we’ll be breaking down each bill, what it aimed to do, and how we stopped extreme corporate-funded politicians in their tracks.
The Wins 🏆
HB 1225 / SB 918 – Rollback of Child Labor Protections by Rep. Monique Miller (R) and Sen. Jay Collins (R)
Last year, the legislature chipped away at teen labor laws by allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to work more days in a row. This year, they came back for more- and even middle school-aged kids were in the crosshairs.
Essentially this bill would have let employers work minors to the bone. Under current law, there are sensible limits on how many hours and days kids can work, especially on school nights. HB 1225 / SB 918 blew past those limits.
For example, 16 and 17-year-old high schoolers could have been scheduled for unlimited hours and days without any breaks, even during the school year. And it didn’t stop at older teens.14 and 15-year-olds who are homeschooled, in virtual school, or already graduated would also be allowed to work unlimited hours and days with no mandated breaks. Basically, as long as a 14-year-old isn’t physically sitting in a classroom that day, this bill would let a boss schedule them to work every single day, for as long as desired, with zero guaranteed time off. These changes would undo decades of hard won protections designed to keep youth safe, healthy, and focused on their education.
Check out this breakdown from the Florida Policy Institute:
If you’re wondering, “who on earth thought this was a good idea?”, look no further than the same dark money network behind a lot of anti-worker policies: the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA).
FGA is a corporate funded, far-right think tank bankrolled by a billionaire donor to Governor DeSantis named Dick Ulhein who’s been pushing rollbacks of child labor laws across the country. Public records even revealed that Gov. DeSantis’s staff emailed draft legislation for this bill directly to its sponsors, basically spoon-feeding the language to Rep. Monique Miller and Sen. Jay Collins. In other words, this wasn’t some grassroots uprising of teenagers demanding the “freedom” to work long hours like they tried to frame it. It was a coordinated agenda from above, courtesy of special interests that see child labor as the next cheap labor pool.
The trouble for HB 1225 / SB 918 began once it faced the light of day in committee hearings, and real Floridians (including actual young people) got to speak. Big shout out to our friends at Youth Action Fund and Florida Student Power for boldly taking on corporate power and making their voices impossible to ignore!
In the House, the bill was carried by Rep. Monique Miller, a freshman legislator and local Moms for Liberty leader who apparently didn’t get the memo on her group’s slogan “Let kids be kids.” She struggled to defend the bill from the get go. In the very first hearing, Rep. Miller got so tangled up trying to explain her own amendments that she confused everyone in the room, including herself. Things got so bad that the committee chair felt the need to rescue her, cutting off public testimony and removing upset students from the committee room in her defense.
Over on the Senate side, Sen. Jay Collins didn’t fare much better. He only got one committee hearing, and it was a doozy. Collins faced sharp questioning and stiff opposition from students and youth advocates who showed up to testify. After an embarrassing hearing where Collins’ bill barely skated through, he stepped into the hallway, only to be confronted by members of the Youth Action Fund who debated him in front of news cameras.
The optics were not great for the Senator. Here was a grown man politician trying to defend why 16-year-olds should work unlimited hours, being schooled in real time by the very teens who’d be affected.
In the end, all the public pressure and the sponsors’ inability to articulate a valid reason for dismantling child labor laws other than greed, proved too much for this bill. The bill quietly died before it could reach a final vote.
So clap it up for another HUGE win for working people — a testament to what’s possible when students, parents, and advocates come together and refuse to let our elected officials turn back the clock.
Onwards and upwards,
Your Friends at Florida For All
