Florida state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a term-limited Democrat running for Orlando mayor, confirmed she would explore the idea of establishing a city program to combat wage theft if elected to succeed longtime Mayor Buddy Dyer (who’s not running for re-election himself) in 2027.
Wage theft broadly refers to a failure to pay a worker all of what they are legally entitled to, and can include paying someone less than minimum wage, requiring workers to work “off the clock,” failing to pay overtime, and misclassifying an employee as a contractor in order to get out of paying them a certain wage or provide employee benefits.
Currently, at least a half-dozen municipalities in Florida — Hillsborough, Alachua, Pinellas, Miami-Dade and Osceola counties — run their own wage recovery programs in lieu of an active state program to investigate wage theft allegations.
Although Florida has been identified as one of the nation’s hot spots for minimum wage violations — an issue that disproportionately affects workers in the hospitality industry that Central Florida’s economy relies on — the options that workers have for recovering unpaid wages in Orlando are limited.
“The number of workers that have come to my office right off Concord Street in my term as a legislator who’ve experienced wage theft and don’t know what to do or where to go because they don’t necessarily have money for an attorney and so forth — you know, obviously we try to build relationships with our two main legal aid organizations to help them, but there’s always an issue of resources and capacity for legal aid groups to do that,” said Eskamani.
She spoke to Orlando Weekly about the issue at a press conference last week about allegations of wage theft at a Disney Epcot restaurant run by the Patina Group, a third-party operator affiliated with the multinational company Delaware North.
Workers in Orlando who believe they haven’t been paid all they’re owed basically have three options to recover their unpaid wages. First, there is the option of filing a complaint with the federal Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division — which can only enforce the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Second is contacting a private wage and hour lawyer for help.
A third option is filing a complaint with the Florida Attorney General, who has been the only state official authorized to enforce the minimum wage since Gov. Jeb Bush abolished Florida’s state labor department in 2002 and voters approved the creation of a state minimum wage — and the AG’s authority to enforce it — in 2004.
There’s little evidence, however, that the state’s top cop has taken action to enforce the state minimum wage and flex their authority by bringing civil action against a law-breaking employer since then.
“The minimum wage has largely been unenforced for, really, as long as Florida’s had a minimum wage,” Alexis Tsoukalas, a policy analyst for the Florida Policy Institute who’s co-authored research on the issue, previously told Orlando Weekly.
Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez, a former Florida House representative, labor rights attorney and candidate for Florida Attorney General this year, has vowed to change this if elected state AG this fall.
“For decades, the Attorney General’s Office has functioned to prop up the powerful and corrupt and not to look out for the people,” Rodriguez previously told Orlando Weekly in an interview. “State attorneys general routinely enforce state labor laws, including state minimum wages, routinely bringing actions on behalf of defrauded workers — except in Florida.”
Options open
Eskamani, a progressive who’s earned endorsements from worker organizations such as the Central Florida AFL-CIO and various labor unions, is keeping options open for a establishing wage recovery program in Orlando.
Although Orlando Weekly isn’t aware of a city-run program in Florida, such programs do exist in cities elsewhere.
The city of Denver in Colorado, for instance, passed a wage theft ordinance in 2023 that formally established a program to fight wage theft within the city’s labor division (must be nice to have one). In 2025 alone, the city wage theft program reportedly recovered more than $2.1 million in unpaid wages, up from a little more than $2 million annually in 2023 and 2024.
“We deter wage theft and promote fair business competition through comprehensive wage and hour enforcement. We protect workers’ rights. Our growing list of accomplishments speaks volumes about the positive effect we continue to have on workers and their families in the Denver area,” wrote Denver auditor Timothy O’Brien in a note about their 2025 report.
The city of Denver’s auditors office highlighted its enforcement of wage protections for gig workers, strip club workers cheated of pay, AMC Theater workers denied sick leave (in violation of a state policy) and restaurant workers who were paid less than minimum wage.
Several cities and the state of New Jersey have also utilized public pressure strategies to push employers into paying their workers what they’re owed. In New Jersey, for instance, the state labor department has a Workplace Accountability in Labor List (aka the WALL of Shame) that publicly lists businesses that have violated labor laws.
The New York City Comptroller’s Office also has an “Employer Wall of Shame” dashboard for labor law-breakers. The wall includes companies like Amazon, DoorDash and the Cava restaurant chain.
Eskamani told the Weekly that if local wage recovery programs in Florida were eventually preempted, she would be open to exploring some of these more creative strategies to protect workers’ rights.
“Even if you’re preempted from doing some of this, create some list, right? Like, have a list of good businesses and a list of bad ones. Transparency can also help when it comes to consumer choices and activism,” she said.
She’d also be supportive of funding legal aid organizations, such as the Legal Aid Society, to help workers cheated of pay if the city is preempted by the state from doing so itself. The Farmworker Association of Florida in Apopka also helps farmworkers fight wage theft.
“We absolutely can provide support and funding to make sure that you have a lawyer, representation and promotion of how do you fight it — because a lot of folks don’t know how they fight it, and so they just abandon the case,” Eskamani remarked.
Eskamani is one of four candidates who have filed paperwork to run for Orlando mayor in 2027. The most prominent candidate other than Eskamani (the two others haven’t even reported any campaign contributions) is Orlando city commissioner Tony Ortiz, who did not respond to an emailed request for comment on this issue.
Will local wage theft programs be preempted?
Florida lawmakers — specifically the Republican majority — have already preempted local governments in Florida, including cities, from forcing employers to provide paid sick leave to their workers (after Orange County sought to do so) or from setting a local minimum wage for private sector employees that is higher than the state minimum wage.
They’ve sought multiple times before to get rid of or otherwise restrict city and county mechanisms to fight wage theft — so far, unsuccessfully.
In 2024, the Florida Legislature also banned local governments through HB 433 from requiring its government service contractors and subcontractors to pay a “living wage” higher than the state minimum wage, effective Sept. 30, 2026.
Opponents argued the bill would cut pay for thousands of workers who work for subcontracted construction workers, janitors and employees of government contractors at airports.
“If signed into law, this pair of bills will have far-reaching negative consequences on our local economy by preempting critical living wage and small-business programs that have contributed to our continued economic growth,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat, warned in a letter to Gov. DeSantis after the bill’s passage.
“This legislation undermines our liberty to strengthen our local economy, hurts our small businesses, and keeps our residents from potential job opportunities and good wages,” she argued.
Public records obtained by Orlando Weekly show that HB 433 — a bill that rose from an uncertain grave multiple times ahead of its final passage — made it across the finish line following aggressive lobbying (emailed threats and texts) by the business community.
Despite the push for a veto from opponents, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis quietly signed the controversial bill into law about a month after its passage in April 2024 without a word or his frequent fanfare. The bill gained national attention due to the fact that it also barred local governments in Florida from establishing rules for employers to protect their workers against extreme heat.
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