On Monday, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of thousands of minimum wage earners in Florida against the state’s Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI). The suit claims the agency has refused to raise the state’s minimum wage to keep pace with the rising cost of living, as required by state law since a constitutional amendment was passed in 2004.
The National Employment Law Project and Florida Legal Service say the agency is denying workers a six-cent raise to $7.31 an hour.
Although the Florida Supreme Court said that the law did not provide for decreases in the minimum wage in times of deflation, the plaintiffs say that have seen internal documents that show that AWI reduced the minimum wage in 2010 to $7.06 per hour from 2009’s $7.21 because of deflation that happened in 2008-2009. They say that the rate should have stayed at $7.21 But because Congress raised the federal minimum wage to $7.25. minimum wage earners didn’t suffer that “erroneous” wage cut.
Those advocates say because AWI’s calculation for 2010 was artificially low, the agency miscalculated the 2011 rate as $7.16 per hour, which is still below the federal minimum wage rate. In fact, the correct 2011 rate is $7.31 — six cents more than the federal rate. They say that AWI has so far refused plaintiffs request to correct the error, which affects 188,000 workers.
This article appears in Jan 6-12, 2011.
