A bill that largely remained off the radar during the first half of Florida’s 60-day legislative session is now garnering strong opposition from labor advocates for its bid to repeal certain worker protections for day laborers and temp workers, including those who take on temporary positions in construction work, transportation, janitorial work, and other industries with a low bar to entry.
Supporters claim that the protections, enshrined under Florida’s Labor Pool Act, are duplicative, unnecessary due to federal labor law, and should be repealed.
Some opponents, however, say the legislation is being pushed by a “predatory” staffing agency that wants to eliminate state-level protections for nearly a million temp workers who have fewer protections guaranteed under federal law.
Protections lost under the proposal, for instance, would include a requirement that staffing agencies, or “labor pools,” inform their temp workers how they will be paid the first day on the job.
Workers would also lose the right to paystub transparency — requiring staffing agencies to provide itemized deductions on workers’ paychecks — and could be forced by agencies to pay for things like clothing, accessories, or other items required for the job. Caps on fees and deductions taken out of workers’ paychecks would also be lost.
Altogether, worker advocates say more than a dozen protections for day laborers would be gutted or significantly reduced if the Labor Pool Act is repealed.
“It’s not a cleanup, it’s not efficiency, and it’s sure as hell not about helping working people,” said Jackson Oberlink, the legislative director for the progressive advocacy group Florida for All. “This is a corporate handout to some of the most predatory players in the temp labor industry.”
The House version of the bill (HB 6033) cleared its second committee stop on Thursday in a 11 to 3 vote along party lines. Its twin in the Senate (SB 1672) unanimously cleared its first of three committee stops last week.
“It’s not a cleanup, it’s not efficiency, and it’s sure as hell not about helping working people”
Under Florida’s Labor Pool Act, first established in 1995, day laborers are defined as “temporary labor or employment that is occasional or irregular for which the worker is employed for not longer than the time period required to complete the temporary assignment for which the individual worker was hired.”
It offers several worker protections that are covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act or Occupational Safety and Health Act, in addition to other protections that aren’t covered by federal law at all. The 1995 law in Florida was Republican-sponsored, according to the now-defunct Tampa Tribune, and supported by legal aid lawyers, religious groups, homeless advocates and others. One lawyer described current working conditions for temp workers at the time as exploitative.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” Arthur Rosenberg, then a lawyer for a Miami-area legal aid group, told the Tribune. “They’re 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.”
Meanwhile, a representative for a Tampa staffing agency told the Tribune bluntly, “I think it stinks.”
Temporary help centers that supply solely white-collar or “skilled” laborers are excluded from the law, in addition to union hiring halls, farm labor contractors and employee leasing companies.
Thirty years later, proponents’ defense of the new bill seeking to repeal the 1995 law is being met with scrutiny. The primary public supporter of the repeal is Pacesetter Personnel Services, a temporary staffing agency that has been accused of violating the Labor Pool Act by not providing day laborers with adequate access to water or bathroom breaks, and for overcharging workers for transportation to job sites.
The agency is being represented by the lobbying firm of Ron Book, a private prison lobbyist and father of former Democratic State Sen. Lauren Book.
Republican state Rep. Shane Abbott, the bill sponsor, has defended the repeal in part by claiming that workers have protections through Florida’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the state version of the federal workplace safety agency that is currently under attack by the Trump administration and Trump’s DOGE.
Only problem is: Florida hasn’t had anything close to a state OSHA agency in roughly 25 years — not since former Gov. Jeb Bush eliminated the state worker safety division, then abolished the entire state department of labor a few years later.
Florida Republicans briefly flirted with the idea of creating a state OSHA in 2021 to circumvent federal vaccine mandates, but later abandoned the idea altogether.
“There is no such thing as a state OSHA,” Dr. Rich Templin, a lobbyist for the Florida AFL-CIO confirmed, during public testimony on Abbott’s bill Thursday. “Matter of fact, there is very, very little regulatory and enforcement framework for labor here in the state since we dissolved the Department of Labor.”
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A lobbyist for Pacesetter notably attempted to use this talking point to her advantage Thursday, arguing there’s no state enforcement of Florida’s Labor Pool Act as it is.
“The [state] Department of Labor no longer exists,” lobbyist Kate Mallette admitted. “But they were never — they never had oversight.”
Oberlink, with Florida for All, admitted that due to Florida lacking a state enforcement agency, all alleged violations of the Florida Labor Pool Act have to be litigated privately. But, he argues, that shouldn’t be used to justify getting rid of worker protections altogether.
“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 told Orlando Weekly over text. “Temp workers and day laborers already operate in a legal gray zone with virtually no oversight. This law is one of the only tools they have to protect themselves from wage theft and abuse.”
Maya Ragsdale, founder and co-executive director of Beyond the Bars — a social justice-oriented work center in South Florida for formerly incarcerated people — said Pacesetter is one of many temp agencies through which her group’s members often seek work.
She and the formerly incarcerated people she works with are concerned about the ways this bill would undermine temp workers’ rights on the job.
“I just really want to underscore how limited the protections in the [Labor Pool] Act already are,” she told Orlando Weekly. “These are really some of the only protections that these [temp] workers have.”
The Labor Pool Act, unlike any other federal or state law, explicitly prohibits staffing agencies from preventing one of their clients from hiring a temp worker for a full-time, permanent position. If this new effort to repeal the Act passes, that could be lost.
Ragsdale, a former assistant public defender and lawyer, believes the primary motivation behind the legislation is to allow for agencies like Pacesetter to “evade regulation” and future lawsuits.
A Senate staff analysis notes, if the bill passes, “There may be a reduction in litigation expenses for labor pools due to the removal of the prohibitions and remedies for violations under the Labor Pool Act.”
While Florida’s workforce is also covered by the federal Department of Labor — capable only of enforcing federal law — planned cuts within the DOL, including worker safety divisions, under the Trump administration have left labor advocates concerned that already lackluster enforcement in Florida (due, in part, to budgetary constraints) could grow worse.
At the same time, Florida lawmakers are also currently considering legislation that would allow employers to legally pay more workers less than minimum wage and weaken child labor law.
“I’m very hesitant to give workers less protection than more protection in light of all of the things that we see coming with this Legislature,” said Democratic Rep. Dotie Joseph Thursday morning. She admitted she felt she needed to do more research on the bill, in light of new concerns brought to light by opponents.
“My goal is to get to the heart of the issue, to fix it to the extent possible for all parties involved,” she continued. “And I think there may be a better way to do this than repealing it all together at this time.”
The House version of the repeal bill has one last committee it needs to clear before it can go to the full House for a vote. The Senate version has two more committee stops. The proposal would need to be approved by a majority of legislators in both chambers, then be signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in order to become law.
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This article appears in The 420 Issue 2025.
