Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin Beckner, in concert with officials from the AFL-CIO and other activist groups, held a news conference Monday night to denounce a bill working its way through the Florida Senate that would repeal local wage theft laws — laws that help low-income workers collect overdue wages without having to go to court.
"Wage theft is a crime to workers, and no different than any other criminal theft," Beckner told a group of reporters speaking in front of the County Center in downtown Tampa, with a handful of activists standing behind him.
At the urging of big business, the Florida House passed its own version of the bill that last week.
Beckner recited a litany of statistics on how prevalent wage theft is in Florida, and said that Hillsborough County ranks only behind Miami-Dade County as the worst place in the state for such actions.
Only Miami-Dade County has a wage theft law in Florida — though it's that law which has infuriated businesses and led them to campaign for a repeal and deny any other county the opportunity to enact similar ordinances.
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2012.