For the second time in two months, Tampa Bay fast food workers with the Florida for $15 coalition rallied outside of the McDonald’s on East 13th Avenue with community allies, as part of the largest multi-city day of action to support Florida’s Amendment 2 to date. Essential workers from Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and Tampa went on strike Thursday to demand a living wage for Florida’s workers.
Although similar to a Fight for $15 car caravan staged at the same McDonald’s in August, Thursday’s rally largely set the stage for essential workers like Gail Rogers, a 62-year old McDonald’s employee, to speak on her support for a minimum living wage increase.
Rogers, like other essential workers across the state, walked off her job at the Ybor City McDonald’s on Thursday to protest unsafe working conditions, low wages, and to uplift Florida’s Amendment 2. After laboring in the fast food industry for more than two decades, Rogers makes just $9.60 an hour at her McDonald’s job—a fraction of the $18 million McDonalds’ CEO received in annual compensation in 2019.
During a pandemic, Rogers is unable to afford health insurance, and told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that the wages that she, her coworkers, and other essential workers earn are not enough to make ends meet.
According to a wage calculator from MIT, there is nowhere in the state of Florida where $8.56 an hour can be considered a livable wage. This calculation underlies Florida’s fight for a $15 minimum wage, which could be realized with the passage of Amendment 2.
Florida’s Amendment 2, which is up for vote this November, would gradually raise the state’s minimum wage from its current $8.56 an hour to a minimum living wage of $15 an hour by 2026, beginning with an initial increase to $10 an hour next September.
According to a recent report from the left-leaning Florida Policy Institute, Amendment 2 would increase wages for 2.5 million Floridians, and uplift one million families out of poverty. It could also be a step towards addressing racial and gender wage gaps. More than 1.5 million workers of color would see this pay increase, with Black and Latinx women standing to gain the most.
“[Florida’s current minimum wage] is just a way to keep people incarcerated, to keep them struggling, and to keep them from being free,” said Alex Harris, 24, a Fight for $15 leader, fast food worker, and returning citizen who spoke to the crowd on Thursday.
“That’s why it’s important this November, allow your voices to be heard once again. You helped out people who were incarcerated,” Harris said, referencing Florida’s Amendment 4, passed with majority support in 2018. “Now it’s time to help our mothers…our grandmas, grandads, young children that’s aspiring to be something.”
University of South Florida (USF) adjunct Greg McCreery also spoke to CL about his support for the $15 minimum wage. “It's clearly an economic and a racial injustice that we’re still stuck at just above, you know, eight-and-a-half dollars an hour for minimum wage, which has not kept up with inflation whatsoever.”
Although recent polling in Florida shows Amendment 2 having an estimated 67% support across the state, individuals like Michael Binder, faculty director of the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab, says this early polling doesn’t guarantee its likely passage.
On an individual and organizational level, there are many who oppose Amendment 2’s minimum wage boost—including Gail Rogers’ employer, McDonald’s. The fast food giant sits on the board of one of the largest funders of the political action committee, Save Florida Jobs, a group that launched in January of this year to smear Amendment 2 and block its passage.
McDonald’s is also facing a string of racial discrimination lawsuits filed by more than 50 Black former franchisees and workers nationwide. This includes a lawsuit filed by three Lakeland McDonald’s workers.
In addition, fiscally conservative think-tanks like the Employment Policies Institute have also made efforts to scare voters about this latest ‘minimum wage threat.’ Economist and Miami University professor Willam Even—whose research has been funded by the EPI—recently contributed to an analysis which concluded that more than 158,000 jobs would be lost with the passage of Amendment 2.
This analysis, which the Save Florida Jobs PAC helped prepare, has been referenced by various news outlets to bolster arguments against Florida’s Fair Wage Amendment. Other economists, such as UC Berkeley professor Michael Reich, dispute arguments seeking to cast a $15 minimum wage as the boogeyman. A recent report co-authored by Reich—which examined areas with high concentrations of low-wage workers—found that higher wages reduce child poverty rates and could stimulate local economic activity. The report did not detect decreases in employment nor job hours. Generally, according to Reich, businesses are able to adjust, and people have more money in their pockets to pay for medical care and childcare.
In addition to Thursday’s strike, the statewide $15’ Day of Action also launched the beginning of a ‘Minimum Wage Challenge’ which will be undertaken by 15 elected officials across the state. Over the next three weeks until election day, these 15 elected officials will join McDonald’s workers at gas stations and grocery stores to experience for themselves how they would fare on a daily budget of Florida’s current minimum wage.
Locally, this includes Gulfport Ward Representative April Thanos, who began her challenge Thursday afternoon.
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This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2020.