Worker advocates manage to kill Florida bill that would have eliminated labor protections for temp workers

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.”

His colleagues, mostly Republicans, bought into his argument, satisfied with the explanation. That is, until a group of formerly incarcerated workers from South Florida who take on temp work caught wind of the proposal. Beyond the Bars, a member-led worker center in Miami, organized a mobilization of temp workers and their loved ones up to Tallahassee in mid-April to fight the measure.

Freddy Pierre, a native of Miami’s Little Haiti Neighborhood and a formerly incarcerated organizer with Beyond the Bars, brought his wife, Stacy (who’s also involved in organizing with Beyond the Bars) and their two-year-old daughter to the fight. Stacy characterized temp worker protections as a family issue.

“We have to come together and make a difference, make a change,” Stacy told Orlando Weekly on a bus back to South Florida, after joining her husband in Tallahassee. “It doesn’t make any sense that people that are making the rules for us are those who have never been impacted the way that we have,” she added.

Over the course of a week, Beyond the Bars members met with state lawmakers in the state Capitol — Republicans and Democrats alike — to persuade them against the bill, which had by that point appeared streamlined for passage.

Jackson Oberlink, legislative director for Florida for All, a progressive advocacy group, told Orlando Weekly bluntly, “This bill was going to pass if they did not show up.” He’s never seen anything like it in his years of advocacy, he added.

Although Abbott’s bill continued to advance in the Florida House, even after Beyond the Bars’ mobilization, the Senate version (SB 1672) sponsored by Sen. Keith Truenow stalled as the workers began publicly testifying against it. Republicans on the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee — visibly surprised by Beyond the Bars members’ testimony, per Oberlink — motioned to temporarily postpone the bill during its third committee stop.

Oberlink said he was reassured multiple times by the committee chair, Joe Gruters, afterward that senators wouldn’t take it up again, therefore ensuring it would die.

“We were all like, holy shit, we just killed this bill,” Oberlink recalled, in a phone call with Orlando Weekly afterward. Katherine Passley, co-executive director of Beyond the Bars alongside Ragsdale, similarly recalled the experience with pride.

“This bill was going to pass if they did not show up”

“We were so relentless,” Passley told Orlando Weekly from their bus back down to South Florida, after the Senate version stalled.

The driving force behind the proposal — described by Oberlink as a “corporate handout” — was Pacesetter Personnel Services, a staffing agency that has notably been accused of violating worker protections under Florida’s Labor Pool Act.

In 2020, Pacesetter was hit with a federal class action lawsuit filed by four day laborers, alleging the company failed to provide workers with access to restrooms and water and overcharged for transportation to job sites, in violation of the law. A federal judge dismissed the complaint in 2023, but said the plaintiffs could refile at a later date.

A Senate staff analysis of SB 1672 acknowledges that, if the bill were passed, there “may be a reduction in litigation expenses for labor pools.” including agencies like Pacesetter.

“The repealing isn’t about gutting red tape, it’s about letting corporations like Pacesetter operate with even less accountability,” argued Beyond the Bars member Alfredo Patino, speaking during public testimony on the bill. “Federal protections don’t go far enough, and this bill isn’t duplicative of that.”

While federal and state employment laws do offer certain protections such as the right to a minimum wage that are outlined in the Labor Pool Act, opponents identified more than a dozen labor protections that would be significantly undermined or fully lost if Florida’s Labor Pool Act were effectively repealed.

Protections that would be lost include the right to an itemized list of deductions on workers’ paychecks, guaranteed access to a bathroom in a hiring or labor hall, and protections against being charged excessive fees for work equipment, meals, or transportation to job sites. Opponents also warned that HB 6033 could block temp workers from taking permanent jobs with the companies they’ve worked for, basically trapping them in unstable, precarious work.

“I just really want to underscore how limited the protections in the act already are,” Maya Ragsdale, co-executive director of Beyond the Bars, told Orlando Weekly. “These are really some of the only protections that these workers have.”

To get the repeal bill passed, Pacesetter contracted the firm of Ron Book, an influential lobbyist and the father of former Florida Senate Minority leader Lauren Book, to represent them.

Pacesetter’s lobbyist, contracted through Book’s firm, defended the bill publicly in part by arguing that the state doesn’t enforce protections under the Labor Pool Act as it is, leaving workers with only the option of taking private action to enforce their rights.

“The fact that Florida doesn’t enforce the Labor Pool Act isn’t a reason to gut it, it’s a reason to strengthen it,” Oberlink argued.

Beyond the Bars managed to rally a number of allies to its side to help inform lawmakers of the proposal’s potential harms, including the Florida AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the Florida Immigrant Coalition and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“We went up there just to go fight for it, but we never even thought that it was going to go down,” admitted Freddy Pierre, a Beyond the Bars member of three years who’s spent time as a temp worker, largely picking up day jobs on construction sites. “Now that it did go down, it gives us big insight on how much we can do with the power that we have.”

Oberlink similarly touted Beyond the Bars’ effectiveness. “These formerly incarcerated temp workers took on the most powerful lobbyist in the state and won.”

Other bills opposed by labor advocates similarly failed to pass this session after receiving public backlash, including proposals to roll back certain child labor protections and allow employers to pay certain workers less than minimum wage.

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This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2025.